Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
T 1 M O TFT Y LtARY
respected at Harvard,
had attained the highest ambition of the young American intellectual, I was totally cut off from the body and senses. My clothes had been obediently selected to fit the young pro-
Though
fessional image.
tinely listened to
Even
after
rou-
before me.
I
had "appreciated"
by pushing
my body
around to "sa-
nervous system was cocooned in symbols; the event was always second-hand. Art was an academic concept, an institution. The idea that one should live one's life
aesthetic sensation.
My
as a
work
of art
to me.
in Flora Lu's
After
we took
sat
on the couch
my
Lu and Maynard the yoga of attention. Each mostarted teaching me eroticism ment was examined for sensual possibility. The delicious grace
open up to
direct sensual reception. Flora
The
Delicious Grace
of Moving
One's Hand
The Collected Sex Writings
Timothy Leary
New York
Published by
Thunder's
Mouth
Press
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publishers, unless by reviewers who wish to quote brief passages.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leary,
one's
hand
by Timothy Leary.
1st ed.
cm.
2.
ISBN 1-56025-181-6
1.
Sex
Philosophy.
Hedonism.
3.
Computer
sex.
Title.
HQ23.L43
306.701
1999
dc21
98-37028 CIP
United States of America
Manufactured
in the
Distributed by Publisher's
Group West
1700 Fourth
Berkeley,
Street
CA
94710
(800) 788-3123
Contents
vii
the Ultimate
1
Aphrodisiac
Looking Back
Millbrook
'66:
On
28
32 43
Body
The
Clitoris:
59
1993
Exposure
the
61
Life Is a Southern
69
Elixir
Male
85
98
105
Pornography
First Official
Act as President
Flynt:
107
1984
108
116
135
137 173
Contents
How To
Drop Out
192
223
242
263
Cybersex
Platonic Love
Electronic Sex
'
265 272
291
Bibliography
VI
figure of the
was
the highest
aim of humanity.
Many
times,
it.
What
may
lie
in the repressive
and
hibition began.
father
Timothy Leary was born on October 22, 1920 the year proHe was the son of an alcoholic, abusive military
and a devoutly
mother with a "fanatically of men and sexuality." At twelve, his father
Irish Catholic
religious distrust
single hundred-dollar
bill.
wasn't long before he began testing the limits himself. By 1940, at 20 years of age, Leary left West Point after having been made an example of with a humiliating nine-month code of silence for drinking. His next
vu
Timothy Leary
Leary was drafted, became a corporal, married Marianne
Busch, and completed a master's in psychology at Washington State University. As a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley and a director of psychological research for Kaiser Permanente Hospital,
he became widely
known
work on
trans-
actional psychology,
Personality,
Play.
2l
Games People
But
sonal
interpersonal psychology
was Leary's
forte, his
own
in
per-
life
was
in turmoil.
Tim-
&
Me, hard-drinking
on both
sides.
At the end of
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woo//" parwhich would climax with Tim and Marianne Leary in
other's. People
On
the
in the garage,
fering
morning of his 35th birthday, Tim discovered Marianne dead by suicide in the family car, asphyxiated. Suffrom acute post-partum depression, she left him to parent
children.
two young
On
had
a self-imposed sabbatical, he
moved with
While
his kids to
Eu-
rope, and
became
violently
ill
in Spain.
sick,
Leary
who
had
of fever-induced satori:
"all the
ropes of
my
"With a sudden snap," he later wrote, social self were gone. I was a 3 8 -year-old
male animal with two cubs. High, completely free." Like novelist William S. Burroughs, who accidentally shot and killed his first
vni
Timothy Leary
him
worldview.
and married
last
his
second wife,
Mary
and Leary
come a ladies' man at the dawn of the swinging sexual revolution. As Slack puts it, "Plenty of good-lookers came to be served." Leary, however, found himself with a new challenge:
111
1960,
moved
faculty.
to
the
Harvard
was
of
thrills
romance and
At
it?)
spills
I
this point
found that
my
sexuality
I
was very
elitist
and
selective.
warm
body
in the vicinity.
bust depending on
tional state,
woman, my emo-
Leary became obsessed with the problems of impotence and its psychological implications. He started an exhaustive research of
aphrodisiacs from
all
To
find out
more about
these matters,
read extensively
on the
chnical,
uality
my
is
macho
scene.
The male
erotic
response turned out to be a most complex situation. More than two-thirds of the male population over the age of 35
reported
less
IX
Timothy Leary
males seemed to have cycles and rhythms and
delicate
sensitivities
all sorts
of
the
that
are
usually
attributed
to
"weaker sex."
Concurrent with but separate from his obsessive quest for a functioning aphrodisiac, Leary had been told about a miraculous
mushroom
That sum-
mer, after only eight months at Harvard, Leary foUow^ed the cue
of creativity psychologist Frank Barron, and v^ent to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to experiment v^ith "so-called sacred mushrooms." After
one
trip
begin a research program called The Psilocybin Project. Ironically, even for Leary, the connection between mind expanstill not so obvious. As Leary remiabout the early days of LSD research at Harvard, "we learned, to our dismay, that hip pleasure-seekers in Las Vegas, Beverly Hills, and Aspen were saying LSD (a psychedelic drug
sion
nisces
tried)
meant
"Let's Strip
Down." These
dis-
came
as a delicious
minds."
wasn't until a jazz trumpeter named Maynard Ferguson and his beatnik wife Flora Lu hooked up Leary with a sensual MorIt
occan cover
girl
from
cerebral/spiritual
LSD
delic experimentation.
is
beautifully
documented
Leary was "turned on" to say the least, as in "Discovering the Source of All Plea-
We
found no problem maneuvering the limbs, tentacles, and delightful protuberances with which we were miraculously
equipped in the transparent honey-liquid zero-gravity atmoThis sphere that surrounded, bathed, and sustained us
. . .
was
my
first
It
chedelics.
me
Timothy Leary
aphrodisiacs
.
Malaca was
bath
and the
erotic
it
agenda, and he fought to publicly sexualize the acid experience. "There is no question that LSD is the most powerful aphrodisiac
ever discovered," Leary announced, to the great displeasure of many of his Harvard colleagues. In 1963, Leary and his associate
Richard Alpert were tossed out of Harvard, the first faculty members to be kicked out since Ralph Waldo Emerson. The party had
begun.
known
as the
League for
Drop out
Nena
von Schlebrugge, daughter of Baroness von Schlebrugge. Nena was a jetset television commercial model for Swedish cigars, featured in Harper's Bazaar, "suited for spring" in "Davidow's short, cuffed-sleeve suit of coral-and-green Italian cotton at Bon-
it,
Nena "became
a seasoned traveler
today
it's
much
mar-
didn't
the
Madness of the
XI
Timothy Leary
returning from
look
India,
like the
Upon
not entirely unaffected by her experiences at Millbrook, Nena von Schlebrugge w^ent on to marry Robert A. F. Thurman, Professor of Tibetan-Buddhist studies at
Columbia, the
first
Western
Tibetan Buddhist
of actress
Uma
ordained by the Dalai Lama, and father Thurman. Today, she is the treasurer of Tibet
Monk
House.
fluence
Meanwhile, Timothy Leary's notoriety, fame, and sphere of inwere ballooning out of control. He celebrated by marrying
Rosemary Woodruff, two times in a row. The first ceremony, at sunrise in Joshua Tree, was filmed and directed by Ted Markland of Bonanza, and featured an entire congregation gassed on acid. The second ceremony, at Millbrook,
actress/model/stewardess
was conducted by Freaky Bill Haines, hip guru of a cult called "the Neo- American Church." Rosemary was Leary's true partner and psychedelic soul-mate during his most public, turbulent years. In "The Berkeley Lectures," included in this volume, Leary regularly refers to her as a
was
a guide at Millbrook
and
Priest of
High LSD, Leary found himself in the sometimes contradictory position of crafting a Healthy New Psychedelic Sexuality. LSD, he insisted, could cure impotence, cement relationships, and initiate
and the
unofficial
none.
hundreds of female orgasms where there previously had been When Playboy sent Alex Haley to interview Leary at Mill-
brook, the author of Roots, perhaps acting on behalf of the magazine's readership, seemed more interested in whether or not LSD
would help
PLAYBOY: Are you preaching psychedelic monogamy? LEARY: Well, I can't generalize, but one of the great lessons I've learned from LSD is that every man contains the essence of
xu
Timothy Leary
men and every woman has within her all women. I remember a session a few years ago in which, with horror and
all
ecstasy,
I opened my eyes and looked into Rosemary's eyes and was pulled into the deep pools of her being floating softly
As
my
hers, her face began to melt and her as a young girl, as a baby, as an old woman
face.
I
saw her
as a witch,
Madonna,
every sight of
life
women,
all
woman,
always inviting, "See me, hear with me, join me, merge me, keep the dance going." Now the
zically, resignedly, devilishly,
think are
obvious.
It's
because of
this,
monogamous
in
my
use of
LSD
over the
complete sexual fidelity to one woman? LEARY: Well, the notion of running around trying to find different mates
is
We
are living in a
world of expanding population in which there are more and more beautiful young girls and boys coming off the assembly line each month. It's obvious that the sexual criteria of the
past are going to be changed and that what's
creatures with our sensory
demanded of
is
and
cellular repertoire
not just
one
affair after
but the exploration of the incredible depths and varieties of your own identity with another. This involves time and com-
mitment to the voyage. There is a certain kind of neurological and cellular fidelity that develops. I have said for many years
now
would not be
Xlll
Timothy Leary
mate went
for
that your
to
on a mattress
LSD
session with
an hour or two, but that your mate had an somebody else, because the bonds and the
PLAYBOY:
of
been reported that when you are in the company women, quite a lot of them turn on to you. As a matter of fact, a friend of yours told us that you could have two or
It's
three different
women
a night
if
you wanted
to. Is
I
he right?
LEARY: For
the
most
have lived
no question and
PLAYBOY: How often do you return this response? LEARY: Every woman has built into her cells and
her
tissues the
longing for a hero, sage-mythic male, to open up and share own divinity. But casual sexual encounters do not satisfy
this
deep longing.
Any
charismatic person
who
is
conscious
of his or her
own
this basic
is
appropriate at the time. Compulsive body grabbing, however, is rarely the vehicle of such communication.
PLAYBOY: Do you
catalyzed
by LSD?
tell
LEARY:
anyone
what
to do. But
would
you use
LSD
to
make out
then you'll be a very humiliated and embarrassed person, because it's just not going to work. On LSD, her eyes would be microscopic, and she'd see very plainly what you
tive sense,
were up
coming on with some heavy-handed, mustachetwisting routine. You'd look like a consummate ass, and she'd laugh at you, or you'd look like a monster and she'd scream and go into a paranoid state. Nothing good can happen with
to,
XIV
Timothy Leary
LSD
if it's
poses.
PLAYBOY:
Suppose you met a girl at a party, developed an immediate rapport, and you both decided to share an LSD trip that same night. Could it work under those circumstances?
that in taking
LSD
with someone
you and opening yourself up in a very vulnerable manner. If you and the other are ready to do this, there would be an immediate and deep rapport if you took a trip together. Peofenses
ple
cult
would be
able to
do
it
upon
a brief
it
extremely confusing, and the people might become quite isolated from each other. They might be whirled into the rapture
or confusion of their
that the other person
own
is
inner workings
and forget
entirely
there.
was that of a cosmic diplomatic, the constant battle between regulating square culture, law enLeary's new, visible position
forcement, "the
ple,
LSD
and the
Nixon
called
America," as
"Come Together"
ifornia.
caught up with Leary, and he was sentenced to thirty years for possession of less than ten dollars of marijuana. After a few months, he escaped prison with the help of the
finally
The law
Weather Underground, and Rosemary accompanied him on his legendary flight from the law first to Europe, then to Algeria,
where they were
first
Rosemary
left
Leary and
XV
Timothy Leary
Northern California but, as biographer Robert Forte puts "her adventure remains to be told."
in
it,
In a bizarre twist that seems crazy even for Leary's life, he then returned to the United States, where his next girlfriend, Joanna
pionage action.
It
Who am
I,
of
I
all
people, to put
down somebody
else's
sumption that everybody knows everything anyway nothing and no way to hide." After his release and
There
is still
There
is
their
break
some controversy as to whether or not Leary himself informed on members of the underground to get a lighter sen-
tence.
Like the mythical Kid Charlemagne, Timothy Leary was officially free in 1976, but in a vastly changed cultural landscape, as
"the day-glo freaks
who
human
was preno home, no job, no credit, and little credibility. I felt quite alone. It was a great time to start a new career." The former prisoner and acid guru hit the Hollyrace."
As he put
"Once
again,
my
situation
wood
movie
and swimming pool brunches, attempting to understand how movies are made." Leary met his last wife, movie producer Barbara, in 1978. He
parties,
Malibu
described his post-prison years with Barbara and her young son Zachary as "the most loving, tranquil, most productive of my life.
I
have been
He
spent
much
standing up to an ever-oppressive government, speaking out in favor of Cybersex, pornography, and free speech. It was Leary's original and scientifically postulated contention that the
XVI
Timothy Leary
organism, like binary computer code, can be turned OFF or turned ON, in a cosmic rhythm. Once again, Leary was in favor of getting turned on.
human
Leary in 1992, but he remained a vigorous optimist till the end, the "Hope fiend," even celebrating his ov^n death when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1996. Once again,
left
Barbara
Leary emphasized that the seemingly mundane or frightening could be eroticized and sanctified.
It
was
a long
way from an
background,
after a long
culture's great
time and today, Leary has often been misunderstood as a self-promoting shaman, a drug peddler, a Dr. Feelgood
Both
in his
own
confidence man. In this volume, you will find Timothy Leary's original mix of alarming scientific lucidity, Lenny Bruce-ian wit,
flights
of
sci-fi
from
DNA to
spir-
freedom to
years,
is
surprisingly consistent in
IS
its
probably
good
for the self, for the psyche, for the genes, for
Daniel
Weizmann
xvii
Author's Introduction:
Intelligence
Is
IS
ABOUT METH-
THE ods. Do-It- Yourself techniques for programming that most important sector of life: sexual relations. This book is a distillation of my writings about cybersexuality, personal liberation, and the meaning of life over the last 25 years.
This
is
any.
Is
Any More?
is
The
editorial tactic
quantum-digital universe,
RPM
MPS
The
quantumdigital
in-
compressed
program
15 billion years. And still running. These information- jammed units have only one hardware-external function. All they do is
flash
OFF/ON when
com-
plex array of
"if-if-if-if
THEN!"
algorithms.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Digital
communication
(i.e.
volves massive arrays of these info-units. Trillions of informationpixels flashing to create the
single
momentary hardv^are
electronics, the
reality of
one
atom.
level of
At the basic
is
quantum
more information
alv^ays coded
in the smaller.
The Newtonian-energy-matter equations of the industrial age described a local-mechanical reality in which Bigger was very Better. You remember the catch phrases sung by the old Newtonian,
Heavy-Metal-Dinosaur Marching Band? Force. Momentum. Mass. Energy. Work. Power. Thermo-dynamics. In the industrial
culture,
In the
Communication Age, so many-much more information packed into so many-much smaller hardware units.
For example, we are suddenly discovering that the human information organ, the two-pound brain, is a biocomputer which processes more information than the 200-pound body.
Another example:
We
DNA
chip, keeps
programming and
i.e. generaconstructing improved, organic, computing A billionbrains. and more of better after tion portable generation
alliances,
year-old
DNA
mega-program
is
the
shudderingly fragile
here-and-now brain!
And
infinitely smaller!
best approached
In this book, I have tried to apply to the wood-pulp mode some of these principles of cybernetic communication. I holed up in the editing room and scanned some 15,000 pages of my published
Author's Introduction
writings any.
If
Some
ers.
articles.
This book
When you
browse, graze,
from chan-
nel to chapter.
If
you should
find
two or
To
be found at
are fisted in
titles
an invitation, an incitement, an encouragement to Think For Yourself and Question Authority. T.F.Y.Q.A. To the extent that
we assume responsibility for programming our minds, the greater emphasis we tend to place on mental performance. If we passively allow others to tell us what to think, then we are helpless victims
of external programming.
a traditional or novel
approach to im-
prove your navigational control over your pleasure cruises. Hindu methods for stimulating the 4-hour erection via hypnogogic yantras. A variety of chemical aphrodisiacs with luscious examples of set and setting. Affectionate plagiarism of great writ-
and poets, including moonstruck astronauts. Neuro-linguistic tricks for arousal and practice using computers. Digital erotics. Maps and diagrams for coordinating the righters
performing smart loving. The message is about erotic excellence performed with humor
and
style.
Looking Back
Millbrook '66
On
LSD
CYBERNETIC
all
And we
have
become more
966.
TO
UP
ence.
THIS MOMENT, FVE HAD 311 PSYCHEDELIC SESSIONS. was thirty-nine when I had my first psychedeUc experiAt that time, I was a middle-aged man involved in the
I
my
of
creativity
ago,
at the University of California and at Harvard, of course, feel that I've become an eccentric and a kook. I would
my life my colleagues
downhill. Since that time, six years has been reviewed in almost every dimension. Most
all sliding
were
my professional colleagues
understand and support what Fm doing. The ones who do, as you might expect, tend to be among the younger psychologists. If
you know a person's age, you know what he's going to think and feel about LSD. Psychedelic drugs are the medium of the young.
As you move up
and
fifties,
TIMOTHY LEARY
fewer and fewer people are open to the possibilities that these
chemicals offer.
To
one of
the person over thirty-five or forty, the word "drug" means two things: doctor-disease or dope fiend-crime. Nothing
you can say to a person who has this neurological fix on the word "drug" is going to change his mind. He's frozen like a Pavlovian dog to this conditioned reflex. To people under twenty-five, on
the other hand, the
word "drug"
refers to a
benders running from alcohol, energizers, and stupefiers to marijuana and other psychedelic drugs. To middle-aged America, it
may
under twenty-five, the psychedelic drug means ecstasy, sensual unexperience, revelation, illumination, contact with nature. There's hardly a teenager or young person in the
folding,
religious
United States today who doesn't know at least one young person who has had a good experience with marijuana or LSD. The horizons of the current younger generation, in terms of
expanded
beyond those of their parents. The breakthrough has occurred; there's no going back. The psychedelic battle
is
won.
None
of us yet
knows
exactly
how LSD
being.
It is
growth and
benefit of the
human
of energy as yet not fully understood. But when I'm confronted with the possibility that a fifteen-year-old or a fifty-year-old is
going to use a
of energy that he doesn't understand, I'll back the fifteen-year-old every time. Why? Because a fifteen-yearold is going to use a new form of energy to have fun, intensify
love, for curiosity, for personal growth. Many have lost their curiosity, have lost their ability to fifty-year-olds make love, have dulled their openness to new sensations, and would use any form of new energy for power, control, and war-
new form
sensation, to
make
fare.
So
it
doesn't concern
me
at all that
time out from the educational and occupational assembly lines to experiment with consciousness, to dabble with new forms of ex8
Looking Back
perience and artistic expression. The present generation under the age of twenty-five is the wisest and holiest generation that the
human
we
listen
Throughout human
history,
to ex-
pand
selves,
time and energy to do so. walk barefooted 2,000 miles to find spiritual teachers who would turn them on to Buddha, Mohammed, or Ramakrishna.
If
themmeaning were to commit the they willing In other times and countries, men would
it if
on LSD
we're speaking in a general way, what happens to everyone is the experience of incredible acceleration and intensifiall
if
cation of
senses
and
all
mental processes
it.
confusing
Around
an LSD
your brain every second; during any second in session, you find yourself tuned in on thousands of these
messages that ordinarily you don't register consciously. And you may be getting an incredible number of simultaneous messages from different parts of your body. Since you're not used to this,
it
it
one or two or three things happening in tidy sequence, you're suddenly flooded by hundreds of lights and colors and sensations and images, and you can get quite lost.
having
just
. . .
You
of static
LSD
movement
It's
begins to move, and this relentless, impersonal, slowly swelling will continue through the several hours of the session.
as
though for
still
all
life
caught in a
suddenly the
show comes
TIMOTHY LEARY
LSD and
The
first
the Senses
you notice is an incredible enhancement of sensory awareness. Take the sense of sight. LSD vision is to normal vision as normal vision is to the picture on a badly tuned television set.
thing
Under LSD, it's as though you have microscopes up to your eyes, in which you see jewel-like, radiant details of anything your eye
falls
upon.
You
first
time
not
static,
symbolic perception of learned things, but patterns of light bouncing off the objects around you and hurtling at the speed of light
into the mosaic or rods
and cones
is
in the retina of
alive
your
eye. Every-
thing seems
light
alive.
Everything
retina.
beaming diamond-bright
Ordinarily
we
with LSD, the organ of Corti in your inner ear becomes a trembling membrane seething with tattoos of sound waves. The vibra-
seem to penetrate deep inside you, swell and burst there. You hear one note of a Bach sonata, and it hangs there, glittering,
tions
pulsating, for
around
it.
an endless length of time, while you slowly orbit Then, hundreds of years later, comes the second note
of the sonata, and again, for hundreds of years, you slowly drift
around the two notes, observing the harmony and the discords, and reflecting on the history of music.
When
is
all
the
wires are flashing, the senses begin to overlap and merge. You not only hear but see the music emerging from the speaker system,
like
dancing
particles, like
You
ac-
sound
At the same time, you are the sound, you are the note, you are the string of the violin or the piano. And every one of your organs
is
pulsating,
in
rhythm with
it.
Taste
is
intensified, too,
like eating
during an
LSD
although normally you wouldn't session, any more than you feel
feel
like
10
Looking Back
eating
jet.
when you
if
take your
first
Although
all
you
of
and
viscosity
such as
we
normal
state
of awareness.
As
an
LSD
experience.
life,
breathing
one of the most overwhelming aspects of seems as though for the first time you are and you remember with amusement and distaste
is
It
air.
During the
haling
LSD
meaning. When you sit across the room from a woman an LSD session, you're aware of thousands of penetrating during chemical messages floating from her through the air into your
ecstatic
sensory center, a
exude at
symphony of a thousand odors that all of us every moment, the shampoo she uses, her cologne, her
grenades of erot-
sweat, the exhaust and discharge from her digestive system, her
Touch Becomes
I
Electric as
Well as Erotic
during one session in which my wife Rosemary leaned over and lightly touched the palm of my hand with her finger. Immediately a hundred thousand end cells in my hand
remember
moment
exploded in soft orgasm. Ecstatic energies pulsated up my arms and rocketed into my brain, where another hundred thousand
cells softly
exploded
filled
The
distance be-
tween
my
wife's finger
my
miles of space,
of silver
with cotton candy, infiltrated with thousands wires hurtling energy back and forth. Wave after wave
of
11
TIMOTHY LEARY
ethereal tissue rapture
delicate,
shuddering
forth
from her
finger to
my
palm.
Transcendentally erotic rapture. An enormous amount of information from every fiber of your body is released under LSD, most especially including sexual energy.
There
is
no question
that
LSD
is
the
Sex under
I
don't
LSD becomes miraculously enhanced and intensified. mean that it simply generates genital energy. It doesn't
automatically produce a longer erection. Rather, it increases your sensitivity a thousand percent. Let me put it this way: Compared with sex under LSD, the way you've been making love no matter
how
get
from
it
is
like
making love with eyeballs, another half-hour making love with breath. As you spin through a thousand sensory and cellular organic changes, she does too. Ordinarily, sexual communication involves one's
cals,
own
chemi-
localized nature, in
what
I
vulgar concept,
cell in
it's as though every is have trillions and making love with you your body her skin but sinks caress every cell in her body. Her hand doesn't down into and merges with ancient dynamos of ecstasy within
When
her.
Every time
I've
taken LSD,
is all
fact, that is
what
the
LSD
experience
union, communion.
dlelight,
fruit
It's all
about. Merging, yielding, flowing, lovemaking. You make love with can-
with sound waves from a record player, with a bowl of on the table, with the trees. You're in pulsating harmony
the energy around you.
three inevitable goals of
with
all
The
LSD
and
make
love with
yourself,
Looking Back
and to discover and make love with another. You can't make
with yourself unless you've made
it
it
with the timeless energy process around you, and you can't make it with a mate until you've made it with yourself. One of the great purposes of an LSD session
is
The more expanded your consciousness, the further out you can move beyond your mind, the deeper, the richer, the longer and more meaningful your sexual communion. Only the most reckless poet would attempt to describe an orgasm on LSD. What does one say to a little child? The child asks, "Daddy, what is sex like?" and you try to describe it, and then
sexual union.
the
little
is it
fun
ice
cream?"
"Well,
it's
but much,
And the child says, "Is it fun like the rollercoaster, then?" And you say, "Well that's part of it, but it's even more than
that."
In short,
can't
tell
you what
it's
like,
because
it's
not like
and there
aren't
words
like
adequate to describe
until
it
it's
you
try
it
won't need to
tell
you.
This preoccupation with the number of orgasms is a hang-up for many men and women. It's as crude and vulgar a concept as
wondering
Still,
it's
how much
a fact that
women who
achieving orgasm
orgasms un-
responsiveness to, my participation in every form of sensory expression, has multiplied a thousandfold.
years,
my
openness
to,
my
13
TIMOTHY LEARY
The sexual impact is, of course, the open but private secret about LSD, which none of us has talked about in the last few years. It's socially dangerous enough to say that LSD helps you find divinity and helps you discover yourself. You're already in trouble when you say that. But then if you announce that the psychedelic experience
is
head.
At the present time, however, I'm under a thirty-year sentence of imprisonment, which for a forty-five-year-old man is essentially
a
life
am
hardly anything more that middle-aged, middle-class authority can do to me and since the secret is out anyway among the
young
feel
moment
is
to say
LSD boom.
Young people
are taking
LSD and
discovering
you
sex wasn't the fundamental reason for this surging, youthful social
LSD
The
is
first
not an automatic trigger to sexual awakening, however. ten times you take it, you might not be able to have a
all, because you're so overwhelmed and deor lighted, frightened and confused, by the novelty; the idea of having sex might be irrelevant or incomprehensible at the moment. But it depends upon the setting and the partner. It is almost
sexual experience at
inevitable,
if
man and
mate take LSD together, that their be unimaginably intensified, and unless clumhis
14
Looking Back
siness or fright
it,
will lead
to a deeper experience than they ever thought possible. From the beginning of our research, we have been aware of this
in
know
it's al-
most
inevitable that a
man
with the
woman who
shares his
prints,
LSD
experience.
Deep and
LSD
profound emotional bonds can develop as a result of an session, bonds that can last a lifetime. For this reason, we
have always been extremely cautious about running sessions with men and women. We always try to have a subject's husband or
wife present during his or her
first
pow-
ways
One
all
LSD
is
that every
man
men and
every
woman
women.
remember
I
opened
my
eyes
and looked
into Rosemary's
experiencing,
were riveted
knowing every thought she ever had. As my eyes to hers, her face began to melt and change. I saw
girl,
her as a young
as a baby, as
face.
I
an old
woman
saw her
as a witch, a
Madonna,
nagging crone, a radiant queen, a Byzantine virgin, a tired worldly-wise oriental whore who had seen every sight of life repeated a thousand times. She was all women, all woman, the essence of female, eyes smiling quizzically, resignedly, devilishly,
always inviting, "See me, hear me, join me, merge with me, keep the dance going." Now the implications of this experience for sex
and mating,
It's
because of
this,
not because
15
TIMOTHY LEARY
of moral restrictions or restraints, that I've been
monogamous
in
my
use of
LSD
over the
is
a very low-level concept. We are living in a world of expanding population in which there are more and more beautiful young
girls
line
each month.
It's
ob-
vious that the sexual criteria of the past are going to be changed and that what's demanded of creatures with our sensory and cellular repertoire
is
body and varieties of your own identity with another. This involves time and commitment to the voyage. There is a certain kind of
neurological and cellular fidelity that develops. I have said for many years now that in the future the grounds for divorce would
not be that your mate went to bed with another and bounced around on a mattress for an hour or two, but that your mate had
an
LSD
session with
somebody
else,
connections that develop are so powerful. For the most part, during the last six years,
quietly in our research centers. But
on
lecture tours
and
in highly
is no question that a charismatic public figure does generate attraction and stimulate a sexual
response.
Every
woman
cells
and
open up and share her own divinity. But casual sexual encounters do not satisfy this deep longing. Any
a hero, sage-mythic male, to
charismatic person
who
is
own
mythic
potency awakens this basic hunger and pays reverence to it at the level that is harmonious and appropriate at the time. Compulsive body grabbing, however, is rarely the vehicle of such communication.
I'm no one to
tell
anyone
else
what
to do. But
would
say,
if
you use
LSD
to
make out
it's
Looking Back
LSD, her eyes would be microscopic, what you were up to, coming on with some heavy-handed, mustache-twisting routine. You'd look like a consummate ass, and she'd laugh at you, or you'd look like a monster and she'd scream and go into a paranoid state. Nothing
just
On
and she'd
if it's
that in taking
LSD
with someone
else,
you
are voluntarily relinquishing your personality defenses and opening yourself up in a very vulnerable manner. If you and the other are ready to
do
this,
there
port be able to
if
you took a
trip
would be an immediate and deep raptogether. People from the LSD cult would
a brief meeting, but an inexperienced
it
make
love
upon
might become
quite isolated
whirled into the rapture or confusion of their own inner workings and forget entirely that the other person is there.
LSD is no guarantee of any specific social or sexual outcome. One man may take LSD and leave wife and family and go off to be a monk on the banks of the Ganges. Another may take LSD and go back to her husband. It's a highly individual situation. Highly unpredictable. During LSD sessions,
is
LSD
you
see, there
social and professional life. You may discover to your horror that you're living a robot existence, that your relationships with your
and your family are stereotyped, empty, and devoid of meaning. At this point, there might come a desire to renounce this hollow existence, to collect your thoughts, to go away and cloister yourself from the world like a monk while you
boss, your husband,
figure out
what kind of
life
to, if any.
LSD
to
17
TIMOTHY LEARY
the monastic
life
and to
find a
men in their late forties who but who even at this mature age returned to society, married and made the heterosexual adjustment. It's not coincidental that of all more than 200 minthose I've given LSD to, the religious group
isters, priests, divinity
students,
and nuns
in
reaction.
And
two
and
of
after a series of
LSD
experiences.
The LSD
you
see, is
an
overwhelming awakening of experience; it releases potent, primal energies, and one of these is the sexual impulse, which is the strongest impulse at any level of organic life. For the first time in
their lives, perhaps, these people
erful life forces that they
had walled
and
self-delusions.
LSD
experience
is
a confrontation with
new forms
wisdom and energy that dwarf and humiliate the This mind. experience of awe and revelation is often described as religious. I consider my work basically religious, because it has,
of
as
its
and the
the
From
psychedelic point of view, almost all religions are attempts, sometimes limited temporarily or nationally, to discover inner potential.
Well,
LSD
is
all
Eastern religion,
aim of LSD, is basically to get high that is, to expand and find ecstasy and revelation within. consciousness your
like the
18
Looking Back
Levels of Consciousness
by the experience of hundreds of thousands of trained voyagers who've taken LSD
defines seven different levels of awareness.
Our system
of consciousness
attested to
The lowest levels of consciousness are sleep and emotional stupor, which are produced by narcotics, barbiturates and our national stupefacient, alcohol.
is
the
conventional wakeful
state, in
which awareness
is
hooked
to con-
ditioned symbols: flags, dollar signs, job titles, brand names, party affiliations, and the like. This is the level that most people, in-
know
the half
levels of awareness, somatic and sensory, would, be of think, particular interest to Playboy readers because most of them are of the younger generation, which is much more sen-
order to reach the somatic and sensory levels, you have to have something that will turn off symbols and open up your billions
of sensory cameras to the billions of impulses that are hitting
this level
known
Arab
Mogul
is
cultures.
It is
marijuana. There
no question
not only
that marijuana
a sensual stimulator,
and
this explains
it
why
it's
why
panic among the middle-aged, middle-class, whiskey-drinking, blue-nosed bureaucrats who run the narcotics agencies. If they only knew what they missing. But we must bid a sad farewell to
the bodily levels of consciousness
and go on to the
sixth level,
which
known that the stronger and LSD take you beyond the
Now
100
the neurological
19
TIMOTHY LEARY
is
hooked up to some 25,000 other cells, and everything you a communication exchange at the nerve end-
During an LSD session, enormous clusters of pathways are turned on, and consciousness whirls into eerie panoramas for which we have no words or concepts. Here the
these
metaphor that's most accurate is the metaphor of the microscope, which brings into awareness cellular patterns that are invisible to
the
naked
eye. In the
normal conscious-
which we have no adequate symbolic language. You become aware of processes you were never tuned into before. You
yourself sinking
feel
down into the soft tissue swamp of your own down dark, red waterways and floating
pumping
industries
relentlessly.
Being swallowed up this way by the tissue and the bloody, sinev^ carryings-on inside your body
first
. . .
time
it
happens to you.
full
fearful, but
of rever-
The next
level
is
precellular level,
which
even more strange and terrifying. This is the is experienced only under a heavy dose of
are
all
cells
aware
as Professor Einstein
is
was
all
matter,
structure,
pulsating information;
well, there
a shattering
deep psychedelic session the world around you, dissolves into shim-
moment
in the
mering latticeworks of pulsating white waves, into silent, subcellular worlds of shutthng information. But this phenomenon is
It's been reported by mystics and visionaries throughout the last 4,000 years of recorded history as "the white light" of the "dance of energy." Suddenly you realize that every-
nothing new.
itself
including
your body
is
just a
dance of
particles.
You
sense
20
Looking Back
is
own
consciousness. But
when
it
it first
really
can come as a terrorizing, isolating discovthis point, the unprepared LSD subject often screams out: ery. "I'm dead!" And he sits there transfigured with fear, afraid to
experience of LSD,
At
move. For the experienced voyager, however, this revelation can be exalting: You've climbed inside Einstein's formula, penetrated
to the ultimate nature of matter,
in
harmony
with
It's
its
taken LSD.
And
every time
begins to happen,
is
that
moment of terror,
even
We know that there are many other levels of energy within and
around
us,
and
lifetimes
we
will
is
have these
opened up
is
that there
no form of
information on this planet that isn't recorded somewhere in your body. Built within every cell are molecular strands of memory and
DNA
designed and executed the construction of your body. This is an ancient strand of molecules that possesses memories of every previous organism that has contributed to your present existence. In code you have the genetic history of your father and your
DNA
It
mother.
the eons. Your body carries a protein record of everything that's happened to you since the moment you were conceived as a onecell
organism. It's a living history of every form of energy transformation on this planet back to the beginning of the life process
over two billion years ago. When LSD subjects report retrogression and reincarnation visions, this is not mysterious or supernatural.
It's
We
don't
know how
these
memories are
21
TIMOTHY LEARY
events from early and even intrauterine
life
LSD
ex-
The experiences
recorded before.
It's
that
in
exactly the
some of
banks, which are built into your protein cellular strands, can never be checked on by external observation. Who can possibly corroborate what your nervous sysfor the
part, these
most
memory
birth, inside
were
still
in the uterus. It
was
is it
consciousness.
if
Why,
then,
was operating while you receiving and recording units of surprising that at some later date,
you have the chemical key, you can release these memories of and exciting months before you were born.^
charted
my own
plumb
it
back as
far as
from which
my
ancestors
my
my
path that I often get boxed into, and because they are frightening, I freak out and open my eyes and stop it. In many of these
back about 300 years, I often run across a particular French-appearing man with a black mustache, a rather
sessions,
dangerous-looking guy.
And
recurrent sequences in an Anglo-Saxon country that have embarrassed me when I relived them in LSD sessions goings-on that
shocked
my
Moments
Irish
barrooms, in haystacks, in canopied beds, in covered wagons, on beaches, on the moist jungle floor, and moments of crisis
in
which
my
spiracy,
from
I've
Looking Back
to
imprints most deeply engraved in neurological memory bank have do with these moments of life-affirming exultation and exhil-
be nothing more than luridly melodramatic, Saturday serials conjured up by my forebrain. But w^hatever they are memory or imagination it's the most exciting adventure
They may
all
I've ever
been involved
in.
In,
Drop Out
"Turn on" means to contact and explore the ancient energies and w^isdoms that are built into your nervous system. They provide unspeakable excitements and revelations. "Tune in" means to
harness and communicate these
new perspectives
in a
harmonious
dance with the external world. "Drop out" means to detach yourself from the tribal game. Current models of social adjustment
mechanized, computerized, socialized, intellectualized, televised,
Sanforized
clearly that
make no
American
sense to the
is
new LSD
generation,
who
see
society becoming an air-conditioned anthill. In every generation of human history, thoughtful men have turned on and dropped out of the tribal game and thus stimulated
from the
de-
we
don't buy your model. We're going to try something new."; "Sorry, Louis XVI, we've got a new idea. Deal us out"; "Sorry, LBJ, it's time to mosey on beyond the Great Society."
The
gene pool to the creative drop-out is anyone questions the social order, he
that he will
citizen.
hardworking, conforming
The automatic, angry reaction become a parasite on the This is not true. The LSD ex-
23
TIMOTHY LEARY
it spurs a perience does not lead to passivity and withdrawal; in better ways, to driving hunger to communicate in new forms,
express a more harmonious message, to live a better life. The LSD cult has already wrought revolutionary changes in American culture. If
poll of creative
young musicians
in this country,
drugs in a systematic way. And this new psychedelic style has produced not only a new rhythm in modern music, but a new
new form
of film-making, a
revise
new
our
new
literature,
philosophic and psychological thinking. Remember, it's the colthe smartest and most promising lege kids who are turning on What an of the youngsters. exciting prospect: a generation of creative youngsters refusing to
fices, refusing to sign
march
in step, refusing to
go to
of-
up on the installment
will
work out
Some Some
ties
and
new
ideas.
underground as
artisans,
and
writers.
Some
out of country.
Many
communiand
adults
who wish to
industries
businesses are springing up: bookstores, art galleries. Psychedelic may involve more manpower in the future than the
last
20
years. In
our
technological society of the future, the problem will be not to get people to work but to develop graceful, fulfilling ways of living a
more
serene, beautiful
and
creative
life.
No
tell
anyone
else
not do with this great and last frontier of freedom. I think that anyone who wants to have a psychedelic experience and is willing
24
Looking Back
to prepare for
it
and
to
examine
his
own
LSD
is
life
impulse
issue,
sense:
we go on with life? This is the only real when you come down to it, in the evolutionary cosmic whether to make it with a member of the opposite sex and
going, or not to. At the deepest level of consciousness, this
keep
it
question comes up over and over again. I've struggling with it in scores of LSD sessions. How did we get here and into this mess?
How
do we get out? There are two ways out of the basic philosophic isolation of man: You can ball your way out, by having
children, which is immortality of a sort. Or you can step off the wheel. Buddhism, the most powerful psychology that man has
My
choice, however,
is
to
keep the
game going. I'm Hindu not Buddhist. this affirmation of my own life, I've learned to confine Beyond
life
my
the
on the
really
DNA code
expect of me?
show
live
or
on tape? Who is the sponsor? Are we completely trapped inside our nervous systems, or can we make real contact with anyone else out there? I intend to spend the rest of my life, with psycheand endelic help, searching for the answers to these questions
couraging others to do the same.
LSD
is
only the
first
of
learning, expand consciousness and enhance memory in years to come. These chemicals will inevitably revolutionize our proce-
dures of education, child rearing, and social behavior. Within one generation these chemical keys to the nervous system will be used
as regular tools of learning.
You
will be asking
your children,
when
come home from school, not "What book are you "Which molecules are you using to open up new but reading?"
they
Libraries of Congress inside your nervous system?" There's
no
in
method of education
25
TIMOTHY LEARY
The reason for this, of course, is that the nervous system, and learning and memory itself, is a chemical process. A society in which a large percentage of the population changes consciousness regularly and harmoniously with psychedelic drugs
the future.
will bring
life.
As some
trips, rather
It's
tions at
happening already. In this country, there are already funcwhich LSD may be served. I was at a large dance recently
where two-thirds of the guests were on LSD. And during a scholarly LSD conference in San Francisco a few months ago, I went
along with 400 people on a picnic at which almost everyone turned on with LSD. It was very serene. They were like a herd of
deer in the forest.
In years to
will be possible to
come,
it
DMT,
It
fast action, lasting perhaps a half-hour. will also be large reservations of maybe 30 there be that may or 40 square miles, where people will go to have LSD sessions in
tranquil privacy.
Everyone
will
not be turned on
all
be some functions that require a narrow from of consciousness. You don't want your airplane pilot flying higher than the plane
and having Buddhist revelations in the cockpit. Just as you don't play golf on Times Square, you won't want to take LSD where
linear,
symbol-manipulating attention
is
required. In a sophisti-
cated way, you'll attune the desired level of consciousness to the particular surrounding that will feed and nourish you. No one will commit his life to any single level of consciousness.
Sensible use of the nervous system
would suggest
that a quarter
of out time will be spent in symbolic activities, producing and communicating in conventional, tribal ways. But the fully conscious
life
perhaps an
26
Looking Back
enhancement of sensual
ecstasies through marijuana and hashish, and one day a week to completely moving outside the sensory and symbolic dimensions into the transcendental realms that are
open to you through LSD. This is not science fiction fantasy. I have lived most of the last six years until the recent unpleasantness doing exactly that: taking LSD once a week and smoking marijuana once a day.
is
The Psychedelic Life will enable each person to realize that he not a game-playing robot put on this planet to be given a Social Security Number and to be spun on the assembly line of school,
Through LSD, each
being will be taught to understand that the entire history of evolution is recorded inside his brain. The challenge of the complete human life will be for each person to recapitulate and
experientially explore every aspect
human
and
will
become
his
own Budon
own
Einstein, his
own
canned, static, dead knowledge passed on from other symbol producers, he will be using his span of 80 or so years on this planet
to live out every possibility of the
human, prehuman, and even respect and time are diverted to be less hung up on trivial, external
pastimes.
leisure.
And this may be the natural solution to the problem of When all of the heavy work and mental drudgery is taken
over by machines, what are we going to do with ourselves: build even bigger machines? The obvious and only answer to this pe-
going to have to explore the infinity of inner space, to discover the terror and adventure and ecstasy that lie within us all.
culiar
dilemma
is
that
man
is
27
My
First Sexual
Encounter
An
endless
number of memoirs,
hiographieSy
and au-
tobiographies have been written over the centuries. Authors have described their births in log cabins, in
ship-holds, in royal bedrooms, in
etc.
cow
bars, mangers,
None of these, to my knowledge, have begun the story at the moment when the adventure actually
gins. I refer,
life
be-
of encounter of one's
that magic
course, to that
life:
all
over
CONCEIVED ON A MILITARY RESERVATION, WeST POINT, iWAS New York, on the night of January 17, 1920. On the preceding day alcohol had become an illegal drug. Academy records reveal that there was a dance that Saturday night at the Officer's Club. Now that booze was illegal, the ingestion of ethyl alcohol took on glamorous, naughty implications. The Roaring Twenties were about to begin.
28
Looking Back
My mother,
moonshine and bathtub gin hung like a rowdy smog over Officer's Row. My father, Timothy, known as Tote, was about to convert from social drinking to alcohol adthe smell of distilling
diction. In training
me
for future
life
he often told
at
all.
me
that Pro-
hibition
It
as
bad
as
no booze
was
long gowns, Antoine de Paris mannish shingle bobs. The flirtatious but virtuous Abigail, by all accounts, was the most beautiful
woman on
Gibson Girl
Tote was behaving arrogantly, as usual. Always the sportsman, he stood at the bar: tall, slim, pouring an illegal recreational drug from
a silver pocket flask into the glasses of Captain
tain Geoffrey Prentice,
Omar
Bradley, Cap-
Abigail,
abandoned
Academy, who asked her to dance. The orchestra played " a Japanese Sandman. Lt. Patton, a notorious womanizer, cut
itary
"Just
in.
Afterward, Tote approached Abigail's table. Swaying a bit to the " "Missouri Waltz, my father said, "Look at you sitting there as proper
Mary. I'm going to take you for a little annunciation." her Abigail, elegant poise compromised only by the faintest her folded fan, rose gracefully, waved gaily to her companflush,
as the Virgin
ions
Captain Timothy Leary drove his Packard unsteadily to the house on Officer's Row, humming "Somebody Stole My Gal."
My
mother
retired to the
beat
him and
left
father
twelve. His
29
TIMOTHY LEARY
Hail Mother, Full of
Grace
gin.
bedroom, removed
two
white
next to Abigail and initiated the prim fertilization ritual typical of his generation. Roughly two weeks previous, a splendid, one-in-a-lifetime adlay
BVDs. He
down
venturous egg had been selected carefully from the supply of one my mother's body and had slowly, sweetly,
soft, silky
Fallopian
Highway
until
it
reached,
on
The Lord
Is
with Thee
At the moment of climax. Tote deposited over 400 million matozoa into my mother's "reproductive tract."
Opinions
spired.
still
sper-
vary in
scientific circles
lion
According to traditional biological scenarios, the 400 milsperm one of which was carrying half of me immediately
in
engaged
to
race, jostling,
bumping, and
to rape poor, docile-receptive Miss Egg. occurred when the successful jock-sperm Reproduction allegedly
forcibly penetrated the
I
ovum.
theory of conception.
I
ducedl
was created by an
RNA.
Like you,
created to play a role necessary for the evolution of our gene pool.
The
final
It
chromosome division was made by the Egg. was She of me that had the final say.
30
Looking Back
Blessed Art
I
Thou Among
Women
found myself rocketed into Abigail's re-creational laboratory, exactly where I was supposed to be, in a warm, pink, ocean-cave pulsing with perfumed signals and chemical instructions, enjoying
the ineffable Bliss oft-described by the mystics. Up ahead, I saw to my astonishment that Miss Egg, far from being a passive, dumb blob with round heels waiting to be
knocked up by some first-to-arrive, breathless, sweaty, muscular sperm, was a luminescent sun, radiating amused intelligence, surrounded by magnetic fields scanners and laser-defenses.
bristling
With
ied her
macho
zeal.
sensory apertures, trying to decipher the signals she caemitted, trying to figure out What Does WoMan Want?
many
My
Naturally performed some tricks to attract her attention. They must have worked because soft magnetic attraction floated me gently along the Grand Ovarian Canal, up the
reer
it.
depended on
and
in
some
and taught.
And
I
Blessed
is
Womb
slim, serpent
was eased
my
body
The
closer
was pulled
to this solarintelligence.
more
dissolved in whirlpools of
warm
Goodbye. Hello!
31
THE amateur,
DELIC and
conscious mind and that universe of digital information that based on the brain.
CYBERNETIC SCIENCE
between the
conscious mind and that universe of digital information which quantum physicists say make up the texture of all realities.
How can we
is
decode
this
OFF/ON language
captured, produced, and stored in digital programs and appUances and manifested on screens?
1960 when a group of psychologists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars based in Cambridge, Massachusetts organized the Harvard Psychedelic Re-
My
search Project.
1.
for activating,
making
CYBERNETIC:
this
map, and
is
communicate
It is
unexplored information.
what goes on
very
different
say.
32
Looking Back
To
all
complicate matters enormously, we are unaware of almost of the signal traffic that continually hums in our brains. The
processes around 100 million signals a
From 1960 to 1963, more than a thousand sessions using psychedelic neurotransmitters produced voluminous data in the form
of reports, tests, and questionnaires. We concluded, as did every other research in this field, that "words" based on the 26 letters
of the alphabet could not describe these experiences.
Beginning in 1960,
scribe this data
we began devising a new language to dewhich flooded our minds during psychedelic ex-
periences.
used words, of course, in dozens of books, hundreds of articles, thousands of breathless lectures and inter-
We
views. But
we always
"Words
just
refrain:
quickly sensed that graphics, icons, yantras, and diagrams were more effective linguistic tools. So we scoured the libraries
for Oriental prints,
We
Hindu
These icons were better than words, serving, as they did, as curt, stripped-down formulae for the torrents of data we were
experiencing.
ages.
The
real
static,
frozen im-
quickly turned to electrical optics: visual images presented, not as smears of color on wood-pulp, but in mobile filmstrips and slides. We were particularly impressed with films of
biological events, microscopic scenes of cells pulsating
illary
So
we
travelogues by passing light This new "psychedelic art" form quickly became popular as "light shows" for rock concerts and special effects for films like "2001: A Space Odyssey."
ating
inter-biological
own
through colored
jells
and
fluids.
start,
we
33
TIMOTHY LEARY
natural language to describe (or at least
the open-brain experience
accompany and
facilitate)
was music.
By 1964, a long list of top musicians had come to Harvard and Millbrook for psychedelic experiences. The contract was simple:
We
brains.
would launch them on voyages of exploration into their Upon return they would report back to their experiences
the jazz musicians
in sound.
Among
who came
Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charles Lloyd, the Miles Davis Quartet, Alan Eager, members of the Duke
Ellington Band,
and much
so-forth.
Of rock musicians
there
was
Lalo
a full brigade including the Grateful Dead, half of the Beatles, the
Moody
Of more
serious composers
we
recall
Schifren,
Ali Akbar,
Ram
Siddha,
was the Residential Musical High Trumpet and the new-Big-Band Sound,
Flora Lu,
whose
feats of elegant
recounted here.
sickle
arrived at
Logan Airport
the
New York
In
two minutes
caught sight of
my
and with her Flora Lu, a smartly-dressed blond woman of about thirty with creamy skin, a full mouth, and enormous dark blue
eyes.
and
poise.
Flora
Lu looked me
34
Looking Back
"Well," she said, "you look like an earthling. After what Salinas told me, I was expecting an extraterrestrial of some sort."
"Abe!"
back.
Uft?"
I
asked.
"Come
problem
along,"
insisted.
No
to drop
off."
back
seat,
Abe
in front,
drove
through the tunnel, around the dock area of Boston, and along
the Charles River.
Abe and
mentary on historical spots for the visitors. "What do you do, Abe?" asked Flora Lu.
"Abe
I
said.
one of the most important psychologists of our times," "Almost single-handedly he overthrew the Freudian notion
is
that the
human
unconscious
is
a primitive homicidal
swamp. Abe
introduced the term peak experience, and he's convinced a lot of people that the human psyche is filled with wonderful potentials
waiting to be awakened and used." "What's a peak experience?" Flora
the professor
Lu
asked.
"That's what we're going to have tonight," drawled Salinas, "if is good to us. Want to come to our session. Dr.
Maslow?"
Abe Maslow:
chology of Being and Motivation and Personality. Maslow is known for inventing the hierarchy of needs in modern psychology, which range from basic physiological needs such as food and shelter, to esteem and selfactualization.
35
TIMOTHY LEARY
"I'd love to," replied
Abe, "but
rm
afraid
rm
cheerful."
softly,
"because
I've
never had
one.
it
do
it.
Our group
and
his wife,
two
graduate students, and the two elegant ladies from Manhattan. Salinas dominated the session with her fast, needle-sharp hipster
mind.
In the morning I was up early. I made scrambled eggs and bacon for myself, and my children, Susan and Jack. Salinas and Flora Lu were still asleep. I drove Susan to the home of a friend,
where she was planning to spend the day, and took Jack to a nearby baseball park, where I acted as assistant manager of a Little League baseball team. Jack was the only one who played
every inning of the game, because he was a catcher and there was no other boy with his consistency at this difficult position. Jack hit a double and a triple. In the last inning he leaped high in the
air to
home
Leary
said,
"That Jack
chatting at
a rock."
I
When
Lu were
"Where have you been?" asked Salinas. "Out and about. Did you have breakfast?" "Yes. But it was pretty strange to wake up and find the house empty. We thought we had hallucinated everything." I poured
myself a cup of coffee. "We've been talking about you," said Flora Lu, smiling. "We decided you may be a hotshot psychologist but you need
36
Looking Back
some help
in the Uttle
how
to dress.
And how
"
to
make
these sessions
more
here.
So
I'd
be honored," Flora
I
my
Lu continued,
interesting subjects
in the first-class
me to meet her at Birdland, the Manhattan nightclub where top jazz musicians like her husband played and hung
out.
I found Flora Lu sitting with a black-haired named from Morocco. We listened to music Malaca, spellbinder for awhile and talked to the musicians who came by the table. I
When
got there
picture
was on
Magazine, she had been married to a member of the royal family of Iran, who had given her a lot of money and treated her badly. She was looking for new meaning in her changed life.
Flora
Lu had
told
I
Malaca about our drugs. But Flora Lu had might be an extraterrestrial so she watched
half open.
I
me
mouth
attractive,
and was
grateful to Flora
for the
Lu
esting
companionship
Around midnight we
thirty minutes
way
to a large
West Side Highway, and some woods and up a gravel driveTudor house. There were two Jaguars out front.
Lu Ferguson: Maynard Ferguson was
world
class
Maynard and
Flora
jazzman
in the 1950s.
37
TIMOTHY LEARY
"Let
huge fireplace. U-shaped couch, deep and soft, Rubbed-wood paneling and bookshelves made the flashy nonobjective paintings stand out. One wall was lined with electronic
plushly carpeted.
The
sound equipment and yards of record albums. What impressed me about the luxury of this room was the sure
erotic intelligence with
which each
detail
"Come, I'll show you your room." Lu opened a door off the long upstairs hallway. "I hope be comfortable here." The floor and the huge bed were you'll
Flora
covered with
furs,
silk pillows.
Wood
and
velvet. Mirrors.
"Would you like to see our room?" she asked. The master bedroom was a soft cove of lace,
and
It
tassels, drapes,
furs.
a delightful introduction to hedonic consciousness. Indeed the very existence of pleasure as a way of life had been
was
unknown
I
to me.
had
lived
much
of
my
adult
life
But these were more than convenient quarters. Flora Lu had designed a temple to seduce each sense into rapture, to entice the
into a
my
respected at Harvard,
Though
had attained the highest ambition of the young American intellectual, I was totally cut off from the body and senses. My clothes had been obediently selected to fit the young professional image. Even after one hundred drug sessions I routinely listened to pop music, drank martinis, ate what was put beI
fore me.
38
Looking Back
art by pushing my body around to "sacred but this tourism had nothing to do with direct aesthetic places," sensation. My nervous system was cocooned in symbols; the event
I
had "appreciated"
was always second-hand. Art was an academic concept, an institution. The idea that one should live one's Hfe as a work of art had never occurred to me.
After
we took
psilocybin,
sat
on the couch
my
open
up to
Lu and Maynard
started
teaching
me
eroticism
delicious grace of moving possibility. one's hand, not as part of a learned survival sequence, but for
The
was wearing
I
my
left
on
my
showered. Flora Lu was wearing light blue silk. Maynard was a Florentine noble garbed in tight fitting velvet pants.
bed while
In a
Moroccan
fire
caftan,
Malaca was
soft,
touchable.
burned gently in the hearth. The air was scented with incense. His sensitized ears now as big as the Arecibo Dish, Maynard swayed with pleasure. Flora Lu floated around the room, her face transfigured with delight. Malaca blossomed into a flower
of great beauty, her classic features of an Egyptian frieze.
now
stylized
My
my
We
rose as one
and walked to
arms around
came
neck.
We were
two
sea creatures.
in this universe
began with the fusion of moist lips producing a soft-electric rapture, which irradiated the entire body. We found no problem maneuvering the limbs, tentacles, and delightful protuberances with
in the transparent honeythat zero surrounded, bathed, and susliquid gravity atmosphere tained us.
39
TIMOTHY LEARY
This was
chedelics.
It
my
first
startled
sexual experience under the influence of psyme to learn that in addition to being instru-
ments of philosophic revelation, mystical unity, and evolutionary insight, psychedelic drugs were very powerful aphrodisiacs.
Malaca was
the sofa.
I
Maynard dozed on
my
Flora
Lu
pitcher of cream,
bowl of
apples, ba-
nanas, and shiny green grapes. She placed the tray on a low
sitting
to a
position on the
rug. "I
want
we
were having
I felt
last night."
a flush of
warmth
I
in
my
body, as
We
Flora
had been
sitting
harmoniously
when
Lu leaned toward me. "It's all Sex, don't you see?" It had all become clear. Black jazz combos playing the boogie. Swedish blondes disrobing on a tropical beach. Tanned slim Is-
boys belly dancing to frenzied drums. Soft laughter from dark corners and behind bushes. The real secret of the universe
raeli
was
that everyone
knew
it
but me.
few days after the session I asked Aldous Huxley what he thought about the erotogenic nature of psychedelic drugs. His immediate reaction was agitation. "Of course this is true, Timothy, but we've stirred
up enough trouble suggesting that drugs and religious experiences. I strongly urge
"
you not
My
first
was
to have a
good laugh
at my own expense. We had been running around the land offering mystic visions and instant personality-change to
40
Looking Back
priests, prisoners,
all
the time
we were
un-
take so long
What an inhibited square I had been. Why did for me to stumble on this fact? We had long rec-
we knew
sound, motion, breathing. And that in the right setting, strong empathetic connections
set
and
setting
toward
we had
steered ourselves
perversely
suality
and
unrealistic about one thing: It simply wasn't poscensor everybody's experience as we had censored our own. About this time we learned, to our dismay, that hip pleasure-seekers in Las Vegas, Beverly Hills, and Aspen were saysible to
Huxley was
ing
LSD
(a
Strip
Down." These
came
this experience,
which we
party item. (Except for searching this area with cooperative Harvard undergraduates.) It was that night's experience with Malaca that alerted me to the
certainty that our G-rated philosophic drugs
and awe, could become a popular that rascal Dick, who was already re-
would eventually be
I
used recreationally.
Since this sexual awakening at the Fergusons' house,
have
the
as a scientific-philosopher to pass
on
Richard "Dick" Alpert: American psychologist Alpert co-directed the Harvard Psychedelic Drug Research Project with Leary. In 1967, during a pilgrimage to India, Alpert became a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, a Hindu guru, and changed his own name to Baba Ram Dass. His classic book Be
Here
Now
41
TIMOTHY LEARY
information that psychedelic drugs, with appropriate set and setperhaps more ting, can be intensely aphrodisiac. This statement
seemed natural, somehow, that Malaca and I would stay together. When I drove back to Newton Sunday night, we dropped
It
set
up residence
was hard
my
kids,
crowds of graduate students, and researchers always talking shop. After a week I still saw Malaca as a temple dancer-divinity
it
middle class 20th century she was out of place, turning into
girl.
was slowly
fading.
42
The Legend
of Billy Will
I:
THE LAST THREE YEARS, ROSEMARY AND I HAVE BEEN enough to spend much of our time with a young man named Billy Will and his woman, Carol, who are to become
DURING fortunate
He He He He He He
was more
fearless
than Buffalo
Bill.
closer to nature than John Muir and Paul Bungar. was younger than Bob Dylan. His global ubiquity was more extensive than the C.I.A.
was
He was funnier than Mullah Nasruddin. He was more likable than Will Rogers.
His
fruits of
pleseed.
He smiled as sweetly as the Baby Krishna. He and his woman, Carol, may be the only hope
evolution on this planet.
of
human
43
TIMOTHY LEARY
Rosemary and
totypes of a
I
new
species.
Homo
Evolutans^
other forms of
energy on this planet. Homo Galactansf Every reader of this Legend will recall having met Bill Will and perhaps even Carol at some time during the last six years. Or
just
know him by
read about him in the media. Although few his actual name (do we?) he has been
J.
Edgar
Hoover might represent the old side of the generation gap, Billy Will is the young side. As always, he is a smiling young man with a bad reputation. If you have had any dealings with him (Carol always stays at home) you will remember him as unforgettable. I recall a conversation with a famous criminal lawyer around Seattle. He was talking about Billy Will and said: "That brotherhood of Billy Will is the finest group of men I've ever known.
They've changed me plenty. I used to be the best criminal lawyer in town. Win most, lose a few. Since I have been representing Bill
and
his friends,
it's
been
says
like
is
We
can't lose.
And
all Bill
Billy Will
was conceived
in
in
Carol was born in 1945, and she's a Taurus with plenty going
for her in Cancer.
They were both born at the birth of the New Age, whatever you want to call it. The beginnings of electronics, atomics, psychedelics, and the holy (wholly) erotics. Bill was brought up on a farm, and at least one of his grandparents was a full-blooded American Indian. He was hunting with a .22 at the age of seven and used to go on three-day pack trips with his dogs when he was eight.
44
Looking Back
Billy
was precocious
in
energetic.
Brashly unrepressed. Utterly fearless. Very Animal. He rarely complained or said a negative thing.
was ten. He was never good at school. He wouldn't pay attention and would look around the room, out the window, walk around the
Bill
class
would
and
brought to school and kept in his petrified wood. Once he was caught
with a dirty book. He was never aggressive or sassy, but still he had the reputation of being an incorrigibly uncooperative child, because when asked
a question he
would
just grin as
though to
say,
"Why do you
told his
first-
want
to ask
me
that.^"
He
those that followed that the readingest people he had met were all uptight and the happiest people he ever met back in Oklahoma never bothered to read or write and until
all
just
wasn't interested.
He was
punitive.
and no respect
for authority."
"He has no interest "He disrupts class by and making funny remarks." "He is
as:
On
all tests
of non-verbal peris
a classic under-
"He
is
good
go out for
organized varsity sports." Bill Will did learn to read in 1966, in order to read Psychedelic Prayers during acid trips. After that he quickly mastered the reading of the English language in order to peruse the Sacred Books of the East, occasionally the L,A. Free Press, and mainly to study
45
TIMOTHY LEARY
certain technical
manuals like bee-keeping, simple chemistry, Indian customs, and the like. plant lore,
As
Bill
a long-time psychologist
considered
it
Will could rapidly comprehend the most difficult technical and philosophic works and still could not write. To be specific he could write only two words, his given name. He told Rosemary
once, "I finally
a
saw
Which
were
for
how
day there
was
a police raid
on the
Will got his name. One valley where Bill and Carol
Bill
living
two
and six squad cars. was on the run, at the time. Although Bill himself was almost never arrested, and never, not once, brought to trial, there happened to be a phony warrant out for him on a charge of stealing oranges. So when the police ran all round the valley checking I.D.'s, Bill, who was out in the corn field at the time, knew he had to come up with a new name fast, and one he could
helicopters
Bill
spell.
When
was
ready.
He knew
sweating in the hot sun, reached him. how to spell Bill, and he had learned
once to his amusement that "double you" changed Bill to Will. So when the agent asked, "What is your name, son?" The response was Bill Will. And so he was known thereafter.
46
Looking Back
II:
How
Bill
Billy Will
grew up
Empire.
The
it
only the
justice.
mind of
and comme-
who
lived in
huge housing
tracts,
thousands of
plywood box houses all set in endless, monotonous rows. Strict and efficient brainwashing techniques were used to keep
from thinking independently. Pavlovian techniques of mass conditioning trained and rewarded citizens for performing
the populace
routine tasks.
The
official
moral climate
in the
The
encouraged
cit-
and sen-
sually restrained.
was
a self-righteous self-pity.
stition fears
imposed upon the people The Government sponsored superand scapegoating witchcraft and invented imaginary
official attitude
The
enemies surrounding the virtuous citizenry. The citizenry was constantly reminded that they felt bad and the reason that they felt bad (in spite of their industrious obedience)
at
was the fault of vague subversive immoral forces continually work to frustrate the American dream. The chief means of disseminating the national religion was teleset in the center of the family-shrine
vision.
TV
Every one of the 100 million cracker-box houses had a room. With amazing
TV programs
ple morality
over eight hours a day. The television indoctrination was straight Manicheanism. Sim-
dramas (including
after hour. In
so-called
presented hour
47
TIMOTHY LEARY
pled with and finally defeated Evil. This warfare with subversiveness required
enormous
taxes.
all
up
on the
basic message:
There were the good guys and bad guys. The good guys were diligent and serious, got good grades, went to college, spent two years in the Marine Corps, got a job, and
married a
girl
pin curlers.
everyone
else
and
watched
It
TV
was easy
every night like Billy's parents. to spot a good guy. He wore his hair short like a
plucked chicken,
he
dressed
in
standard-regulation rumbled
on
his face.
They were dumb or lazy at school, didn't get to even go to junior college. They didn't have regular jobs and didn't get to live in tract houses. They were
romantic, primitive pads or hideouts. The bad guys had foreign backgrounds and international connections. There was a
Mediterranean or Middle Eastern whiff to them. They didn't have credit cards, not even gas credit cards, but they often carried lots
of cash.
They hung out in bands or brotherhoods bound together by some sort of tribal loyalty, and their women were pretty and very sexy and were fanatically devoted. They all ended up in jail, in
exile,
One
or gloriously riddled with FBI bullets. thing was sure: The bad guys never ended up in tract
houses.
The whole business was presented so clearly that there was never any doubt which side you wanted to be on. do anyBilly and his friends knew right away that they would
thing to avoid a tract house in an Orange County development.
In high school Billy
and
his friends
48
Looking Back
like
bought a huge second-hand Cadillac. They wore flashy clothes TV gangsters and rock musicians. They were much influenced by
Elvis,
brought a raw, natural, Southern sexual beat into the car radios. Music was very important to them. The blasting,
impertinent eroticism of the electric guitar became the perfect expression for this first generation of McLuhanite outlaws.
who
The high school girls loved Billy and his friends. By the second year in high school Billy and his brothers were
engaged
in exquisite contact
the police.
they would do silly-kid things like stand in the sidewalk and when a squad car pulled by, shout defiance, and let go with
At
first
Then
they'd run
down an
alley
and roar
off in
They were always hustling in a good-humored way. Some shopand robbery. Never for the money itself. It was just the righteous, manly tribal thing to do. Like young Comanche braves
lifting
collecting coups.
Then came dope. Marijuana came up from Mexico, and Billy and Grennie and Tom and Jeff would get high driving to school. High school was
a funny
game behind
grass.
the really weird, uptight things their teachers and parents do.
Weed was
slow, serpentine, polymorphous, erotic. None of the chicks that hung out with the Brotherhood would ever want to make it with
a heavy-handed, pumping, beer-drinking jock after the cool sex
of grass.
Sometimes the grass would be scarce when the Feds would close down the border, and then, as always, the kids would fall back
on the "bad" drugs reds and whites and even booze. "Let's get loaded, man. Anything to feel good and escape the plastic." The reds (barbiturates) produced a silly, dizzy dreamlike feeling, and then everything would get fuzzy and sloppy like a drunk.
49
TIMOTHY LEARY
"Red-Users" became messy looking and unhealthy; but at
least
they weren't uptight like the shorthairs and boozers. The whites (speed) were better and worse. They made you feel good, good, good. Not the subtle sensual euphoria of grass but
jazzy, alert, energetic. Speed. Speed. Speed.
faster. Outspeed the fuzz. Talk incessantly.
Billy
pills.
Mad-Wolf used
Street at
Billy
up on speed and roar down the Main 3:00 a.m. shooting up store windows.
to get
Fantastic
amphetamine paranoias would develop. Quarrels. Suspicions. You worried all the time about raids and informers.
At one time during the speed days the Brotherhood almost disbanded. But all the time they were learning about life and about
themselves and about society.
They
box
full
and bring
it
across
Courage. time in 1963, Carol was at the hairdressers. She was working as a go-go girl. Under the dryer she picked up a Saturday Evening Post and read about a group of Harvard professors who
One
ecstatic visions
and guaranteed
home
to
Evening Post pious, grim, cornball warnings about danger, brain-damage, and
the article
typical Saturday
The tone of
was
psychosis.
Billy told
me about
I
"You know,
don't
read so hot, so
just
50
Looking Back
sitting
stoned in the lotus position on a beautiful like angels. And one of a chick standing in the
And pictures of you Harvard And a of guys laughing. picture Ralph Metzner, bearded, looking at a flower. And one of a meditation room with oriental prints
waves, gone into some ecstasy place.
and a statue of the Buddha and the Buddha looked high too." "I said to Carol, 'It's unfair. How come these Harvard dudes
get to be high all the time legally
By this time, Billy and the Brotherhood had reached a point of enormous self-confidence. They didn't wait around like the shorthairs to have
government give them something. They just moved out to get what they righteously needed. And when they had to have this new, super-high, blow-your-
mind, ecstasy drug called LSD. Billy sent out feelers to the L.A. and Mexican drug underground but the news was puzzling. LSD was legal, believe it or
not, but
you had
to have
it.
some
connections to score
Finally they learned of a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills who had been turning on Gary Grant and other film notables to LSD. Billy
got
LSD
Billy and Mad-Wolf and Negrito walked in and ordered the surprised host and his guests to line up against the
Ralph Metzner: A close associate of Leary during his Harvard and Millbrook at Haryears, Metzner was a post-doctoral fellow in psychopharmacology vard Medical School as well as a key player in the Harvard Psychedelic Drug
Project.
scientific journal
during the
51
TIMOTHY LEARY
wall.
"Take anything you like," said the shrink. "Where is the LSD?" said Billy. The shrink began to laugh, "In vials in the re-
frigerator.
And have
home.
good
trip."
vials.
They divided
ways
and
one
split for
was typical except more so. He took had ever felt in his life. The colors. The sounds. Carol became a goddess and got a contact high just from Billy's energy. After a few hours Billy took three more. Then the God trip really started. Billy went through the whole evoluBilly's first
LSD
experience
vial
and
felt
better than he
hours
Billy just
"plastic."
And
laughing.
his
sensitive.
Billy stayed
for 16 hours
and then
high for a week, until the acid was gone. He slept ate some fruit. Then he said to Carol, "Call
and
sell
the house.
And
today." went to look for Mad-Wolf. He had moved all the furBilly niture except a rug out of his bedroom and was sitting on the
floor in the lotus position,
new
life
When
more
Billy
came
in, their
kid-stuff cops
we going to do, Billy?" "I dunno. But we ain't coming down." They set off to find Negrito who had jumped
"But what are
split for the desert
and
and had spent two days on a mountain top laughing and crying and praising God. From that time on Billy and his friends did nothing else except try to get higher themselves and to turn on the rest of the
world.
52
Looking Back
"Until something comes along that does the job better, our best hope is dope," said Billy Will.
Ill:
Was Just
On
one of our
they came out with that chromosome breakage story, that was just frosting on the cake." I said, "I don't know what you mean, Billy?"
"Man, when
with amusement, "Well, back in 1965, when the government decided to educate kids about drugs they sent around some medical cats to all the high schools warning us
Bill said,
glancing at
me
and scaring
syn syn
us.
was eighteen
at the time
When
. . .
they said
LSD
is
thought that
how you say it? We syn syndrome meant we would stay "high" permanently. There
that
when
they said in
on
true."
IV:
False
One
of the
more
me
about
Billy
understanding and practical use of the power of Coincidence. His life was marked by a continual series of fortuitous, favorable
events.
53
TIMOTHY LEARY
which primitive CathoHcs describe (and pray
I
for) as miracles,
is
is,
the inherited or
learned ability to tune in to the flow of energy, sense instinctively what is happening and about to happen, and adjust so that one
receives the benefit (or avoids the
harm) of what
is
taking form
around one.
When
would ask
life,
Billy
cidents in his
pronounced with the calculated stutter which accompanied every one of his polysyllabic breaks in role, "Co-co-co-coincidence."
This particular coincidence of the False Moslem and the Bee room of a carpet shop in the native quarter of a Middle Eastern city. Billy and Grennie were in town on busi-
ness
who had
and were referred to the owner of a carpet shop. The owner ceremoniously ushered them into the backroom where
they sat on the cushioned rug and smoked dark, heavy, resinous tobacco, and drank mint tea. After a while, the three men started
to talk business.
Right away Billy flashed that the dude was lying. He looked at Grennie and saw that he was picking up on the same thing.
After a while, the carpet merchant sensed that he wasn't getting across and began protesting his innocence in a loud voice and
raised his
"I
hand
in
swear by
my
Moslem
that
am
telling
you the
in
truth."
who had
window
smoky room stung the dude The carpet merchant shrieked in pain, and shook his hand and sucked his finger. Then he looked at Billy and nodded.
and archetypes of man's basic natures reflect Leary's belief in genetic types. Jung, like Leary, was a Ph.D. and a religious leader and founder of a new
humanism.
54
Looking Back
The
deal
the
way
it
ranged and
V.
Any
Qualified Social Worker Would That Billy Will and His Friends
minimum standards
1.
There
is
no
electricity.
The two
KUA
electric generators, in
excellent condition,
for a sauna
in
exchange
Mr. William
made an
offensive noise
2.
The
is
twenty miles
away. Wells and springs have been tapped high in the canyons to the valley. There are eleven such
unapproved pipe-systems, but the people seem to prefer water which bubbles out of a well on the valley meadow. Although
there
is
no
in the water,
it
cowboys and the Indians before them came for miles source which they called the "Drinking Spring."
to this
3.
Federal, state,
own
risk.
The people
55
TIMOTHY LEARY
4.
The milk
raw, unpasteurized, and sometimes drunk warm. They milk their cows by hand. The barn would not pass sanis
itary inspection.
5.
There are twenty adult dogs and thirty-nine puppies. All fiftynine dogs are unlicensed and without rabies shots. The people
spend much time talking, even gossiping about the dogs' behavior. They seem to treat the dogs like human
in the valley
beings.
Mr. Will
stated:
"We
learn a lot
6.
Except for the winter, these people live in primitive teepees. This is below the minimum standards set by the Bureau of
Indian Affairs which has succeeded in moving most Indians
into houses.
The
is
ground. Water
7. In the
fireplaces
and potbelly
stoves.
8.
Most
of the
men go
terrain.
9.
They
There
10.
is
no
fish
11.
they are forced to use candles and primitive lamps. They employ hand-operated butter churns and ice cream mixers.
Having no
electricity,
no clocks or time-pieces
in the valley.
13.
Although their young children run barefoot in a region which abounds in rattlesnakes, they refuse to exterminate the crea56
Looking Back
tures.
They trap these deadly reptiles with hinged sticks and release them at the uninhabited end of the valley where they
14.
They do not use modern, scientific methods of They plant according to the phases of the moon.
fertilizing.
15.
When
ill,
healers
and
they prefer to go to osteopaths, chiropractors, faith eccentric M.D.'s. They have a primitive suspicion
home by
presence of an M.D. This is a direct violation of state law. Instead of taking normal obstetrical precautions, they celebrate the time of birth as a festival.
17.
The
do not
exist as citizens
18.
The poverty of
their cultural
life is
aboriginal.
They have no
television or radio. They read no newspapers or magazines. They are hopelessly out of touch with the American way of
swimming, sitting around campfires. They smoke incessantly from briar pipes or hand-rolled cigarettes. The few books in the valley
life.
hiking,
and
19.
They
particularly
shun
plastic,
and gaso-
way
to avoid metal.
57
TIMOTHY LEARY
20. In spite of their apparent poverty they seem to have no financial worries or aspirations. Each man leaves the valley three
days a month or one month a year to work "on the outside," thus maintaining their low standard of living. It is unlikely
that they pay any income taxes.
life
as
though the
about
exist. When questioned Mr. Will laughed and said, matters legal political "There is only one set of laws, and we learn about them from
and
worker would agree that William Will and his neighbors fall below the minimum public health standards and should be considered criminal wards of the state and menaces to
Any
qualified social
society.
58
Body
The
Clitoris
1993
an uninfor-
century male. These primitive, amateur, naive observations are designed to stimulate thought about four crucial
issues:
1.
The
From 25,000 BC
until today.
2.
The masculine
monstrous, mon-
commanding.
3.
The contemptuous demonization by males of the female genitaha. The depreciating word "clit" denies the central importance of this wonder organ. The most insulting putdown of another man is to call him a "cunt" or "pussy." The recent
usage of the derogation "dick," according to tabulated wordcounts is almost exclusively used by women.
4.
The awesome
"organ,"
human
life
and
species evolution.
The
Clitoris
may
TIMOTHY LEARY
has been totally ignored, trivialized, and demonized by masculine culture.
McLuhan
the
words we use
to fabricate
we
inhabit.
PER END OF THE VULVA, HOMOLOGOUS WITH THE penis." In my viewpoint, this definition reflects the ultimate oppressive humiliation of Humans by Masculine Authorities.
Brushing aside this hysterical masculine mysticism, we can agree is an impressive plumbing tool which performs two valuable bio-engineering survival functions and one important
that the penis
neurological function:
1.
One or more Quarts of Urine Per Day. QUPD. About five times a day, the male unzips and takes his penis in hand and squirts out a stream of urine.
Urination.
2. Ejaculation.
The penis
3.
Psychological-Neurological function.
enormous
erotic
and symbolic
male
mythology.
62
Body
make men feel like "Men." The orgasms make males feel good.
Erections
throbbing, pulsating
The penis
is
power over
capped, genetically disadvantaged, semi-plegic woman. Indeed, the Sage of 19th Century Sexuality, Sigmund Freud, in
a bizarre
fit
woman's
basic
neurosis
Parable:
talks
The boy
is
confused.
He
"The teacher
it
about the 'vagina.' But the guys in the school yard called a 'cunt.' What is the difference between a vagina and a cuntV
The
father replied,
"The vagina
is
warm,
juicy,
sweet thing
is
designed to
individual
strong.
The cunt
the
The Vagina
The hipper Random House Dictionary (1987)
as "the passage leading
defines the
Vagina
in certain
female mammals."
but the VaginaCervix-Ovary (V.C.O.) organ system which performs two unbethe penis
is
The homologue of
clitoris
1. Pissing:
the urethra
which
ejects
around
one
QUPD.
her urinary disposal equipment. The mechanics of "pissing on" something or someone, so central to male dominance psy-
chology
is
course, as an exquisitely
rowdy form
of sexual aesthetics.)
63
TIMOTHY LEARY
2. Conceiving:
The female reproductive system produces one egg month and nurtures the fertiUzed egg for nine months.
The
There
is
Clitoris
no male homologue for the Clitoris. The Clitoris has no plumbing or sperm-egg functions.
Like the Eyeball, the Clitoris is a sensory organ, an extension of the brain, which happens to be tactically located betv^een the legs of females. From the evolutionary viewpoint the Clitoris is a
bundle of neurons which might be called the brain of DNA. It is fascinating to speculate about the genetic significance of
this neurologically enriched organ.
It
basic
cies
and ultimate power of determining the survival of the speand the direction of species mutation.
i.e.
Macho-sexist Darwinism preaches the survival of the fittest the strongest, toughest males. The strong males who can man-
age to arouse the Clitoris are selected for mating. In most species it is the males who are loaded
plumage, the gaudy markings. It is the display, exhibit, show-off to attract, to arouse the Clitoris of the
elegant, discriminating female to be aroused
What Darwinism Called Natural Selection Turns Out To Be Clitoral Aesthetic Choice
Even more humiliating to male pretensions
is
they are forced to thrash, splash, and swim up the fallopian tubes often described by poets as the Boulevard of Broken Genes.
64
Body
These bizarre self-serving scenarios of male biologists would
have us believe that the 300,000 sperm immediately engage in
race, frantically
bumping,
tv^ist-
Clitoridectomy
The
crucial importance of the Clitoris
is
demonstrated by the
rit-
ual of Clitoridectomy.
reference
each year.
states that clitoridectomy
circumcision.
Infibulation
defines infibulation as
"The
stitching together of the vulva, often after a CLITORIDECTOMY; leaving a small opening for the passage of urine and menstrual blood."
Again, the prudishly antique 1975 American Heritage Dictionary makes no reference to this brutal practice, which each year victimizes more humans than the unspeakable atrocities of the
Nazi Holocaust, Stalinist, and Maoist genocides. In African and Islamic countries, clitoridectomy
glorious "rite of passage" for
is
the standard,
young teenage
girls.
Remember,
the
to
Allah, the vengeful, stern, male god. Clitoridectomy is, therefore, a highly sophisticated religious ritual, the ultimate sacrifice of fe-
TIMOTHY LEARY
Castration-Circumcision
Please
cas-
tration.
Circumcision
sitive flap
a useless, insen-
tential.
Riddle:
What do
of the penis?
Answer
penis
is
to Riddle:
called
insensitive
bag of skin
Castration
is
but
or lobectomy,
brain.
Do we
To
sume
be
the
CLITORIS
full
to the soul?
clitoris,
removal of the
do we
as-
woman
true?
cannot have
orgasm?
Is this
arises. It is
of years, the female orgasm has been censored and suppressed by male rulers. A fierce taboo has ignored and even demonized the
female orgasm.
Here,
ORAL
orgasms in favor of vaginal orgasms. This taboo about the clitoris is profound. Cloaked
This taboo
still
in silence.
66
Body
Dictionary gives three definitions of castration. The ridectomy is not mentioned.
word
clito-
is
unacceptable in most
human
societies.
The image of
tural moralists.
v^oman writhing
in gratification,
in pleasure,
moaning and
all
excul-
ultantly screaming
is
intolerable to almost
most hip, modern Random House Dictionary writof course, by white males: "Orgasm: the physical and emoten, sensation at the peak of sexual excitation, and usually tional accompanied in the male by ejaculation."
Listen to the
The
by
its
is this:
A woman
is
can have
many
re-
embarrassingly limited
Parable:
the
legendary
African-
many
as
later I lectured at Reed College in Portland, room was so jammed that around 20 students sat The Oregon. I was also seated. behind me. on stage
few months
Q&A a
somber, scholarly-looking
is
man
standing in the
ment
experience?"
Feigning confusion,
I
say?"
young woman
replied: "Tell
him
the answer
is
'y^s.'
And
that they
come
rainbow."
it is
Now, at the end of the 20th century new metaphors about female sexuality.
67
possible to suggest
TIMOTHY LEARY
Why
Clitoris
as the
Clitoridectomy is like blinding the eyeball, removing the basic organ of neurological intelligence which so charmingly designs
human
evolution.
The fact that we are now aware of these matters and can discuss them is a good sign. I think. What do I know?
68
Life
Is
a Southern Exposure
He phoned me one
his opinion, the
me
that, in
war between
much more dangerous than the East-West War between the Cold Dust Twins, Brezhnev and Reagan. Since I had come to the same conclusion, I sat right down at the computer screen and digitized the following.
And
it.
As you can
probably
KNOWS THAT
LiFE
ON
THIS PLANET
EMERGED WAY
tropics.
Way
first
illegal.
69
TIMOTHY LEARY
chain competitions
among
grams of physical
fitness
and
There was, a few hundred million years ago, a predictable consumer craze for high-tech hunting and fishing gear such as fangs,
bones, teeth, tusks.
And
hip-huggers.
Later, younger generations of self-directed organisms developed auto-mobile bodies equipped with tentacles, wings, legs which allowed the social-climbing, trendy forms to squirm, crawl, walk,
or
fly
uptown
to the
more
Human
Down
Species Also
Emerge
first
ancestors needed no
rious, dark-skinned
The
glo-
Transportation
cab.
was by
pedi-
Food gathering involved manual delivery systems. Social relations and communication involved gestures, spoken words, dancing, strutting. The semioticians call this "Body Language." There was direct skin-tight experiential contact with the commodity markets and energy centers upon which human survival depends.
We're talking about real estate basics here. Solar energy; pure spring-fed water supply; cavernous homes with wood-burning
fireplaces.
70
Body
found
ments.
in the
handy vegetable,
fruit,
fowl,
fish,
Our newborn ancestors, 25,000 years ago, were equipped with an additional powerful survival appliance. They had brains calibrated like ours, with 100 billion neurons. And each neuron, we
now
has the thought-processing capacity of an IBM-PC The software (i.e. the thoughts) which operated this awesome neural equipment was programmed to react to inrealize,
or Macintosh.
for our species is homo sapiens sapiens. This the information-processor: the thinker about
thinking.
With
all
that
there
had to be a whole
lotta figuring
heads of our ancestors. Just as our bellies are designed to digest food, our human brains are designed to digest and process information. This inevitability leads to thinking about
happening
like
they do.
What,
for example,
must we do
Water-Grocery-Supply sources?
For example,
ter bill?
And
to
Why
grate?
do animals whose
What have we
provide our dinners decide to midone to our furry and feathered friends to
the powers of
fertility,
pregnancy, birth?
Why
illness
and death?
Questions about the placation of and the bill-payments to the Providers of Vital Resources fall under the department of
R.e.l.i.g.i.o.n.
The
first
human
tribal cultures to
71
TIMOTHY LEARY
Pantheism was tailored to the conditions. Since the information
each tribe received was Hmited to the neighborhood network,
re-
ligion was hands-on, personal, practical. The Gods (i.e. the Higher Power and Utility Companies) were local, reachable, avail-
So each
tribe
developed
its
own
mythology.
And
each person
making theological
the individual body.
deals.
the
dialogues with the Supremes. Religious rituals involve the body: drums, chants, dance. Since
the
it
body
is
and worship,
is
flaunted
and
in
glorified in its
is
role of
women
pagan cultures
The Her
body
seen as the producer of Life. Tropical latitudes produce natural attitudes about the gods,
is
illegal.
to the Mid-Temperate
There are
logistical
cultures
Mid-Temperate emerged frosty Cold Temperature (45th to 60th) or the Tropics. Next time you look at a world map, turn it upside down and notice how most of the land lies north of the equator. Note how most of the inner waterways, the seas and lakes and rivers are
located
on the
affluent,
in the
busy north-side. Suppose the Mediterramiddle of Africa with the Nile flowing South
and the Congo too and that big Gibraltar mouth opening to
72
Body
Notice
this
Mid-Temperate is more demanding. Your Hunter-Gatherer Credit-Card life won't get you far up here, lad. Natural technologies no longer suffice. There are a few neighbor-
up north
hood
fruit stores
and
You
gotta start whittling and chipping artifacts. Tools. During the years 4000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. the strip between the 30th and
Run your
names of
(still
tion). Babylonia. Egypt. Rome. Venice. Spain. Portugal. Can you feel the action? Along this thin highway moved the camel caravans, horsedrawn carts, the legions, the sailing ships, the galley cruise-hners,
possible by
new hand-tool
tech-
and for communicating ideas. and the alphabet made long distance communication
Can you visualize how small, tribal gene-pools numbering hundreds and then thousands of souls became absorbed into nations
numbering millions? These centralized feudal empires were held together by collective labor and strict cultural rules.
The
individual
in a vast hierarchical
lodging,
and
se-
were not obtained through natural-physical actions. The goodies come from Caesar's utility departments.
curity
Politics
is
next door.
Religion
It
is
no longer
G.O.D.s (Gods
structions,
On
a personal handshake deal with the local Duty) but a complicated political coda of intablets
priest-
TIMOTHY LEARY
hood which claimed to be fronting for the Almighty Ruler who allowed no violation of his morals and laws. When the neighborhood 30th to 45th Streets was happening, the individual was vassal, totally dependent and submissive. Tropical folks felt some primitive pride in their personal ability to put food on the table and avoid enemies via their own bodily skills, jungle-smarts and bribery deals with the utility companies. But
the Feudal person did not share this personal sense of
self-
confidence.
The most revealing insights about any human culture or genepool probably come from observing attitudes towards animals, the human body, and the female body in particular.
Polytheistic societies totemically
spirits
worship natural forces. Animal and the naked forms of the attractive healthy human.
religious art
Check the
ple.
framed
in the cave-galleries of
pagan peo-
Feudal
societies,
monotheistic principle of
Ruler,
One
Elderly
Male God,
the Almighty
theistic
who sits on a Throne swathed in Regal robes. The MonoGod who rules things along the 30th to the 45th is never
town
bare-assed, flaunting his
naked beauty
and
grace.
Stone?
Monotheistic religions tend to derogate the natural, scorn the body, and manifest a "puritanical" hatred for the naked female form. In orthodox Christian, Jewish, and Moslem cultures, woman is covered by black dresses and veils. This is tacky, lowfashion garb, designed to conceal
Her
life-affirming image.
is
But
life
not
all
submission and
puritanical repression.
his camel.
The man can always beat his wife, his kids, But the greatest source of pleasure and pride for True Believers is this: You can always strap on your sword and head
Street
74
Body
around.
For 10,000 years and more, northern folks have invaded, conquered, and enslaved Southerners. Kill 'em, loot 'em, rape 'em in
the
name
of
count.
itives.
They
God and Country because tropical people don't are heathen, pagan, illiterate, immoral, naked primrejected
They have
that's
why we
have
the metal sv^^ords, the v^ritten Bible, the cavalry, the ships.
And
they don't. The invasion and colonization of the south by the north has produced a curious "genetic stratification" or cultural infiltration.
The Northern
And
artificial,
manmade,
social,
and
linguistic
Feudal system of centralization, monotheism, bureaucratization, hierarchy, and military control based in Madrid, produced a colonial replica of life in 15th-century Spain.
mode
up
These aforementioned Feudal Empires which emerged along the Mediterranean basin were based on hand-tools used to tame
horses, channel water, harness wind-power. People
were held
to-
75
TIMOTHY LEARY
gether by an intricate
tions.
web
The next
learned
stage in
to
how
human evolution was the industrial. Humans make tool-making machines. The German, Johanit all
made
possible the
sible mass-literacy,
map
mass-education, factory technology. of Europe and run your finger along the next
to 60th latitudes. Notice
lie
step in evolution.
The 45th
how
great
strip.
where the
Industrial
Age emerged
in this
narrow
USSR.
God
The
great religions
tremely White
Men worship
ethical
com-
good machine,
is
now
defined as
dependable, prompt, reliable, efficient, productive. There are many reasons climatic, geo-psychological,
cal
logisti-
why
industrial civilization
emerged
in the cold
environment.
was needed to warm houses in the frigid north. And heat requires the manufacture and storage and transmission of Newtonian energies. So
It's all
about heat.
it
was heat
Coal power.
Mastery of mechanical
The
zone,
by Northern theologians "The Third World" and, of course, the Tropics, now called "The Fourth World."
called
now
76
Body
So colonies were established
in the
Middle
East Asia, and Africa. These zones were efficiently looted for
"raw"
materials.
Just as the
Roman and
and gold Mid-Temperate and ivory, so did the white-skinned empires steam and jet south to build railroads, airstrips, tourist hotels and to erect the steamsailed to the tropics to find black slaves
belching,
smoky temples of the Mechanical God: factories. Again, the new Northern culture is layered down over the
old
customs. These days the typical tropical country take Haiti or Kenya is stratified like this: a solid foundation of tribal culture, veneered over by a Feudal, Strong-Man military regime, which in
supported by American or European or Soviet mechanical This works well for a while. The North exports guns and might. machines. The guns are used to motivate the tropical folks to dig
turn,
is
the
to
raw
pay for guns. But on weekends and full-moons and sacred occasions, guess what? The natives tend to revert to nature. They joyously perform
the old rituals: strip off the veils, paint their bodies, drum, dance,
them
engage
in
word.
It's
honored, religious ceremony an invitation to the Gods to inhabit, possess, take over the minds
and bodies of
Believe me,
service.
their worshippers.
no one
is
on
his
Now
basic
Or if they are, it's not in suppliant, begging prayer. the white Protestants found this extremely shocking.
religions,
veil
The
aim of northern
and
loins of all
we
recall,
was
sin.
orcise, censor,
subdue the
which the
hearts
The Northern
priests
denounced
77
TIMOTHY LEARY
heathen, deviUsh,
together in
evil.
intoxication, possession.
Efficient
trickle
down
to the
North
religious crusades.
down
south for
many
endemic war, increasing terrorism and towards the Northern rulers and cultures. growing anger But now, these scary attitudes no longer seem quarantined
and
religious conflict,
down
there in the untidy southerjj latitudes. They are already bubbling up to confront the industrial nations of the north.
The
cultural
and economic
traffic
perate zones has always been a two-way street. The north exports artificials: tools, machines, guns, law books,
political constitutions, cultural rules, religious taboos.
its
natural resources:
raw
materials, ores,
and
oil,
of
And, most important, human bodies in the form of slaves and migrant workers. Now, guess what these poor, benighted heathen smuggled in with them on the slave ships and immigrant boats? Exactly those
precious
gifts
hibited in their
own
78
Body
Precisely that for
for.
natural!
The Pagan Culture. The pantheist ways. The worship of the The wild celebration of life. The exultant embrace of the
The spontaneous embrace of the sensual. The street-smart wisdom of the outsiders who, for centuries, had been cooly observing and mocking the "pious white folks" marching around with their guns and crosses.
ancient biological powers.
This insidious cultural invasion surfaced in the Roaring 20th Century when intelligent Northerners began to sense the heavy
price they paid for mechanization.
pagan
revival
in the
form
The
jazz
USA and
the
USSR
The The
first
dustrial ethos
loosening up.
definitive explosion of
pagan
cultural
themes happened in
riots.
the 1960s.
Civil Rights
movement. Black
Pride.
The ghetto
Why?
Because rock
is
rhythms and European-pagan-Celtic-Druid lyrics: amplified and flung around the world at the speed of light by quantumelectronic technology.
And
was
it is
no accident
and and
roll
In-
no more," he expressed
who
Factory culture.
79
TIMOTHY LEARY
The popularity of psychedelic drugs
revival of southern culture.
is
flowering tops of the marijuana plant. None of these botanical substances are as physically or psychologically dangerous as the
factory-made,
northern mind-benders:
distilled
liquor.
North
The southern botanicals grass, opium, coca are threatening to the order and conformity demanded by the Factory Culture:
1.
Like the natives w^ho use them, these vegetables grow^ wild. They are non-domesticated. Grown up in mountains, they are
naughty unauthorized, free exchange that operates outside the control of the white bankers and the feudal tax collectors.
Inexpensive, wild, southern herbs compete with the lucrative slave
going.
2.
Native drug rituals are immoral, i.e. banned as sinful by the northern religions. Damn right they are! They incite personal
freedom, pagan celebration, self-expression, disordered joy,
sensual pleasure.
priests.
Remember
Moses and
mountain and finding the tribes stoned, whooping it up around the Golden Calf and other natural icons? Heresy. Sin.
Devil Worship.
3.
The
is
also criminal.
Why?
Because
the white
men who
say so!
80
Body
4.
The and
is
bad-for-business,
it
is
treasonous.
You
and
in
come
these weirdo
white robots brandishing guns, despoiling your neighborhood, your culture, breaking up your family, scorning your
gods.
Now
is
the
most
sistance
tive
to perform your native rituals, get high with a nafriends have gently
and
reli-
man's economic,
gious, legal,
domination.
as long as
it
was
wogs
get their
primitive kicks.
Keep 'em
blissed
and nodding
out.
new postwar generations of white folks from the Cold War and life on the assembly began turning away line. The cultural revolution in America produced a vigorous reBut
in the 1960s, the
naissance of the source religions of the south. Pantheist love of nature was expressed as was Ecological awareness. Worship of
bodily grace manifested in physical fitness. High pagan style came hip-high fashion. The acculturalization of psychedelic drugs by Americans in
be-
the
1960s provides a powerful endorsement of tropical religious rituals. The psychedelic drugs are all derived from tropical plants.
mushrooms, mescaline from peyote, LSD from of course, marijuana. These are not the euphorand, rye-ergot, or ants, energizers, or intoxicants favored by urban dwellers.
Psilocybin from Psychedelics produce states of possession, trance, expanded consciousness, spiritual illumination, powerful, mystical empathies with natural forces. These experiences, which are the aim of ancient pagan religions, are the worst nightmares of the organized
religions.
The
was not
campus
fad;
it
was a
81
TIMOTHY LEARY
world-wide revival of the oldest religions going. The hippies intuitively sensed this as they proudly wandered around barefoot,
playing
flutes.
campus
elective.
Psychiatrists
officials
and
politicians au-
tomatically
assumed that psychedelic experiences were selfinduced bouts of mass insanity. There were no terms or paradigms
Western
intellectual tradition to explain this bizarre desire
in the
learn, in the
gans and polytheists. In the 1960-70s, millions living in industrial nations used psychedelics in the context of Hindu and Buddhist
practices.
The
acid tests of
in the
Ken
Kesey.
The
love-ins.
The communes.
Today,
Rambo
of
group support expressed in pagancannot be over-estimated. The psychepsychedelic experiences delic culture profoundly flaunted drug-taking because it was
importance
The
The
designed to produce nature-loving, tribe-solidarity experiences. first San Francisco Be-In was advertised as "A Gathering of
the Tribes!"
Dead
concerts
and 50 million use booze moderately. Why.^ Because they indulge during group rituals which protect against abuse. Beer-busts.
Cocktail parties. Smoking grass with friends. It is important to note that the only elective rehabilitation pro-
gram
for alcohol
is
A.A.
Body
The
stated aims
and
tactic of
der to a higher power in an intense support-group setting. No churches. No government officials. No salaries. No funding. Just
village-type
group support.
gift that Southerners gave to the North was a "resurrection of the body." The factory civilization covered skin by uniforms. The role models of the mechanical society were se-
rious,
frowning
men
in business suits,
No man
of substance in
grace,
Washington, D.C. or
flashy style.
Moscow
or
Watch
stubby
movies.
little
stiffly
old
When
the
on the playing
fields
and
TV
voodoo beats. Caribbean spontaneity on the base-paths. Black grace and elegance on the basketball courts. This was good. Just plain healing and good for the brittle, mechanical white soul.
The Southerners
bought into factory
robots or engineers.
The Southerners
make good
But during the 1960s, the Southern rituals and styles suddenly took over the younger generation. The walk, talk, dress, and attitude loosened white kids up.
workers. They demanded to be paid what they were worth as individuals. Wilt Chamberlain is the guy who changed the eco-
nomic role-model. He was the best. And he expected, logically, to be treated like the best. White athletes had been treated like
mill workers,
like
83
TIMOTHY LEARY
Coach
tickets.
Rooms
in sleazy hotels.
Wih demanded
first class.
And
It
hotel
was
rooms with beds large enough to fit his grandeur. and performers who came up with the
new economic
role-model for the 21st century. In the postindustrial society, if you're good, then you're not a slave or a serf
or a worker. You're a performer!
free agent!
war between North and South is not over. It can be seen in the War on Southern Plants which allows armed American policemen to roam around Central and South America, burning crops and harassing peasants. Here at home, The
civil
War provided distractions for politicians like George Bush, who enjoy being photographed with Dan Rather down in the
the
ghetto or barrio, busting into the houses of the poor folks. As Blacks and Latins exert more power in politics, the old-boy,
lo-
bumper
stickers saying,
"Run
Jesse,
Run."
With
emerges not
and polling-booths. At the same time, the Southern migrants grow stronger in numbers and power. Soon, very soon, whites will be a minority in
most American
cities.
The old Confederate slogan comes back again to haunt oted sons of Dixie. The South will truly rise again.
the big-
84
Sex
Elixir
that won't
make me
sick
One One
make me
nervous, wonderin'
what
to
do
makes me
the
News
AT
tine existence of
my
read
about
in books,
would
neces-
Holy
save the
human
race.
During these younger years, I dreamed of becoming a warrior, an explorer, a great scientist, a wise sage. During adolescence a new noble challenge emerged.
It
was
sex.
I
ran into an annoying paradox. Although sex was obviously important to a happy life, I did not have perfect control over my erections. Apparently, many other males shared this same
here
inefficiency.
And
use
The first problem was that the erections came when I couldn't them producing the terrible embarrassment of the unexpected
85
TIMOTHY LEARY
arousal in social situations and the inability to get up and walk across the room because of that mind-of-its-own acting up down
there.
Later
came
the nervousness of
ment of
panties.
foreplay.
"making out." The wild exciteThe unbuttoning of the bra. The removal of the
into position in the backseat of the car.
seat?
The wiggling
believe a
Would you
rumble
The
zipper.
of the contraceptive. The heavy breathing. hear someone coming? The maneuvering for penetration.
Whew!
What happened
to
my
unit?
This interaction between the busy mind and the willful body
critical issue.
And
in puritanical
1936
ment.
consulted the dictionary and discovered that something called an aphrodisiac increased sexual performance. I rushed to the library and consulted every encyclopedia available. Not a mention
I
of aphrodisiac.
How curious
Oh
adult
well.
life.
was
totally ignored.
facet of
Lindbergh could fly the Atlantic. We could put a man on the South Pole. But we couldn't get control of the most important part of our body. I guessed that. After I graduated from college, I decided to be a psychologist. This seemed to be the key profession. If you could understand
your
My
was happily married and productively erections reported to duty promptly on schedI
86
Body
The Quest
In 1960,
I
Goes to Harvard
moved
vard faculty.
My
sexual situation
was changed.
thrills
was
a 40-year-
old single person facing, once again, the spills of the mating ground.
of romance and
At
very
this
point
found that
my
sexuality
felt
(how
shall
put
it?)
was
elitist
and
selective. I
no longer
teenage desire to fuck any consenting warm body in the vicinity. A one-night stand could be a lust or a bust depending on my
feelings
my
emotional
state,
and
my
period
of heat.
To
find out
more about
these matters,
my
and
personality departments.
is
not an
automatic macho scene. The male erotic response turned out to be a most complex situation. More than two-thirds of the male
population over the age of 35 reported less than perfect control over their desires. Adult males seemed to have cycles and rhythms
and
all
totally virility
were
either lying or
agreed that most of the guys who claimed were too primitive and callous
Or
something like that. So here was an interesting social phenomenon. It was generally believed by psychologists back there in 1960 that much of the
conflict, aggression, paranoia,
so-
ciety
line
was due
to sexual frustration.
Sigmund Freud
it
started this
to
its
logical, political
sex the
more
87
TIMOTHY LEARY
Edgar Hoover. Here was a 70-year-old prude who got his FBI kicks from collecting sexual dossiers on rival politicians. Take,
for example, Richard
J.
Nixon, a
was
concluded that
were available, many of the psyproblems facing our species would instantly
be improved. So I descended on the Harvard Medical School Library with a team of graduate assistants. We scoured the bibUographies and
journal
files
for data
about aphrodisiacs.
literature
on the
history of
the
first
sex stimulus;
it;
it
was
Pythagoras bragged on
Machi-
it.
and organs of horny animals have been used as an aphrodisiac in almost every time and place. Hippomanes, flesh from the forehead of a colt, was mentioned in Virgil. Medieval
The
Europeans regularly used the penis of the stag, buU, ox, and goat. Ambergris, a jelly from the innards of the whale, was used by
the royal mistress
James Boswell.
Shellfish
Madame du Barry and the insatiably curious Musk was a perennial favorite of erotic searchers.
have been popular, of course, especially oysters and fish, a form of puffer, is still used by
hopeful lovers. Even today more than 3,000 Japanese die each year while on this dangerous quest.
AU
fly, is
"most
cele-
An
Many
mentioned by the Greeks and Romans, was nothing good old marijuana and hashish.
88
than
Body
mushrooms, and the South American yage. The South The royal jelly and pollen from
plant.
Truffles,
The cocoa
Peruvian ceramics portrayed pornographic scenes on pots used to prepare nose-candy of the Andes. Is cocaine an aphrodisiac?
"First you're hot,
sophisti-
cated researchers.
Casanova attributed his record-making lust to raw eggs. The strong, hard, up- jutting horn of the rhino has caught
the
imagination of erection-seekers for centuries. You grind it up into a pov^der and eat it or toot it. In the Orient today, rhino dust
goes for $2,000 a pound. In Hong Kong restaurants they'll sprinkle some rhino-horn powder on your dinner for a hefty addition
to your
bill.
My
onstrated that
my
quest
was not
a lonely one.
Throughout the
just plain horny human have the Alchemical the true Grail beings continually sought
and
aphrodisiac.
this
noble
no proven aphrodisiac in the current medthere was apparently no research being done on
there
this
most important topic. curious. Here was a medicine that could cure many of our medical and psychological problems, and there seemed to be
How
When
plained
tried to talk to
my
friends
on the medical
faculty about
clammed
taboo. If any medical scientist or physiologist here, or in the Soviet Union, were to apply for a grant to research this field, his
reputation
would be
ruined.
He'd be considered a
89
flake."
TIMOTHY LEARY
"But
it's
protested.
"The
first scientist
who
and make a bundle of money." "No question about it," said the endocrinologist. "We all know that if a crack team of psychopharmacologists were to research
this topic, they
It
will
Prize
and
make
an overpopulation problem. The culture isn't ready for a medicine that would have the male population running around with erect dicks bulging out of their pants.
senhower
vaccine.
Come back
in
20
years,
and maybe
pill
would
man
over his precious equipment. I couldn't understand it. If your car decided to run when it wanted to, you'd have it adjusted right
was temperamental and turned off at its own whim, you'd take steps to put you back in charge. This resistance to self-improvement became really obvious when I was taken to see a sex show in the Reeperbahn of Hamburg, West Germany. I was with a very sophisticated editor of the news magazine Der Spiegel and a well-known psychiatrist. The show amazed me. Straight-out fucking onstage! I was most
away.
If
your
TV
set
impressed by a big Swedish youth who bounded around the set with this enormous hard-on, fucking first this fiery redhead who wrapped her legs around him, and then a sultry brunette who lay
invitingly,
saucy blonde who bent over, leaning her head against the wall with her backsides wiggling.
For 20 minutes,
total self-mastery
this acrobatic
in front of
90
Body
is impressive," I said to my German hosts. scoffed in that scornful, jaded Hamburg style. "That's not the real thing," said the editor. "He's taken some
They
drug."
The
I
psychiatrist agreed,
waving
his
I
hand
in dismissal.
it
leaped to
my
feet.
"What drug?"
shouted. "What's
called?
get it?"
No
answer from
my German
friends.
They
just couldn't
admit
to being interested.
The Aphrodisiacal
In August, 1960, by a
Effect of Psychedelic
Drugs
swimming pool in Mexico, I took magic mushrooms and discovered the power of psychedelic drugs to reprogram the
I
brain.
rushed back to Harvard and started the Psychedelic Drug Research Project. Novelist Aldous Huxley was our adviser. We as-
sembled 30 of the brightest young researchers in the area. We were on to something that could change human nature. We felt like Oppenheimer after his Almagordo bomb. Except better because psychedelic drugs allow you to release the nuclear energies inside your head.
two years the Harvard Psychedelic Drug Research studied the reactions of 1,000 subjects to LSD. Project discovered that the key to a psychedelic-drug session is set
In the next
We
and
setting. Set is
your mind
fix.
Your psychological
state.
Be very
Aldous Huxley: English novelist and essayist Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell made him the world's most influential writer
on the psychedelic experience and a grandfatherly presence during the explosive psychedelic era.
91
TIMOTHY LEARY
careful
get
it.
is the environment. If your surroundings are scary, then be scared. If you'll your surroundings are beautiful, then you will have a beautiful experience.
Setting
Our
sessions at
for self-discovery.
The
sessions
were held
sex.
emphasized
My
holy
set
who
later
He
discovered that
the
and expectation were erotic and the setting was his bedroom, then psychedelic drugs were powerfully aphrodisiacal. I give Ram
Dass a
I
breakthrough.
to
me and
true, you can access any circuit in great. your brain and change your mind. But it's time you faced the
exploration stuff
It's
facts,
Timothy.
the secret.
Other sophisticated people came to Harvard and tipped us to The philosopher Gerald Heard. The beatnik poet Allen
Ginsberg. The Buddhist sage Alan Watts. The Western folk hero Neil Cassady. We were just rediscovering what philosophers and poets and mystics and musicians and hedonists had known for
Allen Ginsberg:
One of the most influential poets of the 20th century, Ginsberg was also a Buddhist and serious seeker of altered states of consciousness and a major friend and ally to Leary.
Alan Watts: Anglican priest and English author of The Spirit of Zen and Psychotherapy East and West, Watts was the premier lecturer on Buddhism
and Eastern mysticism for Western audiences. Neil Cassady: The hero of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Cassady was known as the Johnny Appleseed of Dope for his brave forays into mind-changing
states.
92
Body
centuries. Marijuana, hashish,
else, I multiplied my sensory pleasure, learning the techniques or erotic engineering. Everything became a source of aesthetic-erotic pleasure. The effect
was
in the head. If
life
you could
still
We
could
move around
why
couldn't a
man
way
A
One
night in 1983,
a friend
who worked
at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. During the evening he mentioned that a breakthrough in the erection department was at hand. He said that a Stanford University research team was de-
veloping a
tions!
pill that would give immediate control of your erecThe active ingredient was called yohimbine. This was a discovery of historic importance! It could mean the
end of male
insecurity, cruelty,
friend also said that a local group. The Southern California Sexual Function Center, was giving these new pills to research subjects. I phoned and made an appointment with the director. If
My
the
pill
existed,
wanted to
try
it
make
it
available
to the public.
The
clinic is
men were
at the carpet.
couple had
93
TIMOTHY LEARY
The nurse greeted me
I
cordially
and asked me to
fill
out a form.
said,
would
please
fill
did.
charm of a
hairdresser, asked
I
me
to
come
to a backroom.
ex-
plained that
wanted
He
this
me
to take
some
tests.
At
I was about to say "Forget it," but it occurred to me that would be a great opportunity to see what happens in these
And
I
going to give
me
the
pills until
So
took the
tests.
Then came
plained that
mad
scientist stuff.
if
we had
to find out
unit.
there
flow of blood to
base of
sat
my
So he wired the
of
my
cock, the
my
my
leg to an amplifier,
and we
My
genital bloodstream
filled
room with
its
still wired for sound. The Boom-da-boom\ I kept explaining that I had regular, if unpredictable erections. just wanted the pill! The technician was very understanding.
it
"Tell
and drug abuse, fatigue, overwork, marital discord, early traumas, fetishes, anxieties, and menopausal life stages all play an important part.
repressions, venereal diseases, alcohol
94
Body
At
this point
to deal
dawned on me that this cUnic supposedly set up with sexual arousal was the most antiseptic, mechanical,
it
I
unerotic place
had
If I
seen.
could
feel
draining away.
felt like
the
jun-
movie location
Congo
Who
do
this place?
thought to
myself.
He
insisted that
during your sleep to measure the amount and strength of nocturnal hard-ons. I explained that I had them all the time. "Listen,
just
phone my wife. She takes readings every night." The male nurse outfitted me with the peter-meter, stored
for
men
in the waiting
room
it
looked up sadly as
case.
My wife We rushed
was
me
to try
on.
to the
Velcro straps,
bedroom and set it up by the side of the bed. wires hooked to dials, clocks, and meters. It was
I
got an erection.
My wife
applauded.
"That gadget is wonderful!" she marveled. "Hey, look out," I shouted. "You'll ruin the experiment."
"Fabulous," murmured
I
my
wife.
is
"Hey," worried, "everything we're doing "Three cheers for science," she said.
Well,
being recorded!"
we broke
off.
cable appar-
ently short-circuited.
The clock motor heaved a buzzing sigh and meters went over, flickered and came to a satiated
said.
I
"Fabulous,"
Next Monday
I
I felt
very guilty.
tried to explain
to the technician.
He
gave
TIMOTHY LEARY
me
a stern look.
When
pill,
he
made
an appointment for me to see the doctor. That weekend my wife and I took some mushrooms and had a
wonderful time.
doctor.
On Monday I reported
still
for
in the waiting
room.
went
to see the
male nurse and told him about the great sex party over the weekend. He looked at me coldly.
I
He seemed unimpressed. I asked him for the aphrodisiac pill once again. He denied such a potion existed. His position was clear. If
you didn't have a circulatory problem that could be treated by normal medicine, your penile control and enhancement program
was
to be handled by a shrink.
Or your
A
It
Thrilling
Breakthrough
in
Medical Science!
was August 1984 when the news we'd been waiting for hit the news wires. Physiologists at Stanford University announced that they had developed a potent aphrodisiac. The potion was extracted from the bark of the African yohimbine tree. Tests on laboratory rats proved "sensational." It seemed that
the rodents doubled their sexual activity.
announced that they were ready to begin testing the drug on humans. The news flash stirred up the predictable
researchers
enthusiastic response.
The
Medical Center
News
spokesperson at the Stanford University Bureau reported that the item had "been
accorded a good deal more space and time than most of the bureau's reports on medical progress."
reaction
in
coming.
One
Greenberg, publisher of Science and Government Report, complained that "in terms of science's traditional quest for fundamental understanding, yohimbine research is pretty thin
96
Body
Mr. Greenberg asserted that this interest and self-indulgence
Stuff."
in happiness
was
to a
as
opposed
Los Angeles Times. The purpose of the piece was research and discourage its continuation.
So here
we are again. Ronald Reagan makes speeches denouncand promising to raise the swollen, turgid national hedonism ing debt. If I were running for President, I'd promise the American
people a crash program in the production of a
inexpensive aphrodisiac.
assure them.
If
safe, effective,
my
I
fellow Americans.
elected President,
I'll
I'll
power
neutralize
As we used
to sing in the
good old
97
Hedonic Psychology
The
'he
Basic
Rhythm
only and
rhythm
basic
of:
is
the
oscil-
lating
EXPANSION
Body
At a certain point
energy slov^s
in the galactic dance, the
outward movement
down and
is
to contraction.
The great stellar spiral whirls back to center. Look upwards on starry summer night to the constellation Sagand you
to
will notice diffuse white clouds of stars. This
is
ittarius
it
has
all
come and
which
it
You
are looking
home
to
you are very silent and tuned to you may hear the hushed song which accompanies the cosmic dance. You may hear Her whisper from the nuclear
the nuclear, seed beginning.
fine sensitivity
past-present-center,
"Come back
to me."
galactic
whole
the atom.
in
And
free,
sometimes locked
rhythmic structure.
Now
out.
Now
in.
Open
up. Close
Down.
Exhale. Inhale.
The
adventurous outer spins around the nuclear inner. And both orbit around larger magnetic centers, thus creating a double spiral. The
double
helix.
2.
Which Brings Us
is
to Life
the
energy information.
compressed
ex-
DNA
driac
RNA
adventure, mitochon-
movement, membrane contact, permeable opening up, blossoming, erotic merging. The tight center and the expansive trip.
99
TIMOTHY LEARY
3.
...
Which
in
Turn Ennbodies
The
cellular trip
is
nomical.
human
hensibly galactic.
of cells center
around structured
transactions,
organs,
interconnected,
weather reports, pollution ratings, stellate arterials. Watery canals are jammed with plasma planets, hematological Messierian clusters, white corpuscle comets, endocrine spaceships commuting.
25,000 mile expanse, breathing life film in close connection with the one-whole. The biological web. Two young hot stars brush by each other
in a Southeast
later a
new
fertile
up housekeeping High School girl in Kansas. The body breathes to the old basic rhythm. Open. Close. In and Out. Contract. Release. Speed up. Slow down. Get free. Get
vaginal valleys of a
trip
Come on
around
jor
structures
have
been
identified
for
millennia
heavens.
100
Body
4.
...
Common
Senses
While the body galaxy centers on the densely packed DNA strand, every organ constellation within the body Zodiac orbits around
the brain, the somatic energy center. Every one of the trillion body cells and every organ constellation is infiltrated by the web of nerve fibres creating neurological
bio-electric
late
Van
cell,
each constel-
organ system.
The Brain. Galactic headquarters of the fleshly corporation. The Nervous system fills corporeal space with flashing electric messages. Out and back. Off and On. Synaptic conversations. Cunning amino acid architects snuggly protect miniaturized General Motor Plant Engineering cell chambers designing more and more complex Fisher bodies. This year's standard equipment a 13 billion cell brain hooked up to stereophonic audition receivers, bifocal,
cell-battery-powered
magic-eye
shock
adjusters,
gustatory liquid
analyzers, and
and evaluation of
aerial
chemical content.
Cerebral headquarters are ringed by a sensory
billion-celled stations for receiving
DEW
line
of
Common
waves. Finger Tip touch couch. Gyro-stabilize. Balance, Temperature detectors. Posture and Movement. Light waves. Sound
waves.
Each sense organ operates on the same rhythm. up and receive. Close down to transmit. Alternate
On
Off.
Open
current.
in naive
The blinking young pupil expands, delights dilated wonder and then is taught to contract and focus down.
101
TIMOTHY LEARY
Open! Free sensual reception. Free flow. Eros.
Close!
Narrowing of
attention.
No
if
playful fiddling
around to
Use
it
just
enjoy stereo-audiotion.
social good. You'll be
Turn
for the
if
punished
you
don't.
(And
SORE
you
do.)
5.
...
Still
to the
it-
self in the
human
and freedom,
the
socially-
between
and
hedonism,
between
is
history.
It
expresses
itself
human
and among
social
groups as
politics. It is called
many names:
Social control
Civilization
versus
versus versus versus
individual freedom.
Off. Off.
Off.
On.
barbarism.
On.
On. On. On. On. On. On.
Conditioned reaction
unconditioned pro-action.
play.
sinful acting-out.
Duty
Virtuous Restraint
Off. Off.
natural.
versus
versus versus versus
Reward-pain
Responsibility
Off.
Off.
Doing well
Off.
102
Body
Christian
TIMOTHY LEARY
tence" as "eternal" and therefore believes that the pleasure
principle
tic.
is
and the
The notion
impossible
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse: This German born philosopher applied Freudian analysis of unconscious repressions to Marx's social views. His classic One Dimensional
rial
Man condemns
over
industrial society
desires
more fundamental
needs.
elite,
104
Pornography
First Official
Act as President
IS
"FORGIVE, LiVE,
AND
When I am
my
first official
act will
As a
start
I'll
young
friends
pardon myself, my w^ife, my own kids, and my (all 50 million of them) for any and all offenses
J.
I'll
pardon
every government official who has offended the Law of God and the Order of Nature. And then I'll ask the forgiveness of every
human
being, plant,
and animal
species in the
Monster.
And
if
there
is
anyone around
who
Johnson-Nixon administration, well, and so and I'll even pardon him for that. up say
107
The Persecution
1984
of Larry Flynt
UPON A
TIME, THERE
IN LIB-
ONCE erty
were endowed by birth with the inaUenable right to hve and grow without interference from kings or dictators or popes or ayatollahs or secret
Amazingly enough, this Utopian dream of hberty worked! The lucky land waxed strong and prosperous from sea to shining sea because the people insisted on thinking for themselves. And people who think for themselves work harder and invent new
things to
make
life
more
enjoyable.
became a shining
light of
hope
The word spread. Here was a land in which everyone had an equal shot. No matter where you started from, you were encouraged to get out there and shuffle and hustle and bop along the road of your personal dream to the rock *n' roll beat of your own
rhythm
section.
common
108
Pornography
1.
The
first
favorites.
was Fair Play. In the eyes of the law there were no The government was supposed to be the umpire referee
staying out of the way, not taking sides to favor one or the other, making sure that the game was played fair and square. Everyone,
different,
was allowed
without censorship. You couldn't put a player in the penbox just because they were scoring points against your side alty
or saying things you didn't agree with. This set of rules was called the Bill of Rights.
2.
The second common-sense rule had to do with Religious Freedom. The founders of the country understood that the cause of
conflict
most
civil discord in the past had been rekooks who believed that their God was the One and Only God and that everyone who didn't fall down and worship their particular God was evil and was going to hell and prob-
ligious fanatics,
away
humor. Just
Christian,
try using a
little
gentle satire
around a Fundamentalist
Adventist.
If
Muslim, Jew
is
or Seventh
Day
Religion
Guy
in the
Sky
will strike
God
Bible-thumper will gladly volunteer for the Holy Hit. How come all these big-shot-gods are males who back the Republican Party?
recall a
little
good-natured kidding?
I
conversation with
my
friends
"One
Tommy
"is re-
Chong, toking on a
ligion."
and shaking
his
head solemnly,
make 'em
109
TIMOTHY LEARY
3.
So
now we come
common
sense that
guided Jefferson and Frankhn and the other agnostics who founded the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. An
irreverent Sense of
Humor
is
Real red, white, and blue Americans basically despise stuffed shirts and know-it-alls. Since 1776 we have loved to make fun of
pompous
sion
spoilsports.
Nose-thumbing
at dictator-types
is
our
fa-
Our
first
was
a wild party.
The
revolutionaries got
The
first
announced
was not a knight in shining armor, but a ragtag guy with a grin on his face named Yankee Doodle who stuck a feather in his cap to make fun of the rich snobs. Most people would agree that the greatest author in American history is Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. What most people don't know is that he was an outspoken defender of personal freedom and sexual liberation. Most of his work including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn involved biting, satirical attacks on prudishness, hypocrisy
and, above
all,
religious fanaticism.
Mark Twain to make fun of the Sacred Book was a heroic deed. He got away with it because he wrote in the vulgar, ungrammatical language of the common man, and he made 'em laugh, like Cheech says. Mark Twain paid for his irreverence. His
For
books that
death.
and the
were burned by
died a deeply depressed man, saddened by the growing militarism, chauvinism, and prudishness of the people running
He
America.
make fun
This persecution of irreverent writers who celebrate life and of religion is a basic fact about American literature. It's
. . .
Walt Whitman.
110
Pornography
Scorned and ignored during their lifetimes, they were dusted off and made heroes when they were safely out of the scene. The
same thing
ley.
is
Let me be patriotic here. America has always had the best record for defending free thought. In most other countries a writer or publisher who attacks the ruling clique, makes fun of the state's
religion, or
encourages the working class to think for itself is censored and jailed (if not put to death) without a second thought.
This couldn't happen here, could it? Surely the First Amendthe basic American sense of good humor and fair play
ment and
would prevent any administration from silencing a prominent dissident. Well, maybe and maybe not. Let's invent a scenario in which a clique of militaristnot in a bloody coup, but by control of the media. George Orwell spelled it out quite clearly in his prophetic novel, 1984. You create a benign,
industrialist
who
is
taking good care of them. You invent an enemy in Eastern Europe or Asia and start a Cold War. You whip up fear and rage. The
rich get richer,
sacrifices are to
be
expected to defeat the enemy. You don't need enormous, expensive gulags or concentration
camps to keep people from dissenting. You control the newspapers and magazines. Print media couldn't exist for a week without advertising, and the big industrial corporations dole out the advertising dollars.
Of
course, television
is
is
people's
lives.
Work
time to watch TV. Since the advertisers control the video content,
there's
no way the
you give them lots of violence and car crashes and war. and gunplay Just as Orwell predicted, the news became totally orchestrated.
basically bored,
Start a
little
war by invading
111
TIMOTHY LEARY
coverage, and then announce a glorious victory. We're walking
tall
again!
Arrange for a Korean airliner to fly over the airspace of the hated Eurasian empire. When the spy plane naturally gets shot
down, the media builds up a frenzy of hatred for the enemy. Now you can double the military budget. The Eurasian generals are
happy
too.
military
They get to double their weapons budget. The antipeace movements in both countries are set back and the
belts.
The system worked perfectly until a dissenter arose, who, because he had access to the media, couldn't be crushed. He was
worst nightmare come true. He was a stubborn, idealistic redneck from the heart of the Bible Belt who had amassed a fortheir
dom
them
rural
political,
He was
a real
working
Here was
Kentucky by way of southern Ohio who was pulling off the Mark Twain number, making obscene fun of the system. And his
magazine was getting more and more popular. So the word went out. Stop him. The powers that be
familiar remedy.
tried the
Cut
No
didn't work.
The
and tobacco
their income.
was
thumbed
system by running
in the
own
Okay. Call
Mafia and
tell
them
of his magazine.
No
own
distribution system.
Made
before.
112
Pornography
No problem.
Amendment
In a short time he
was
But
The
First
of state control, protected him. Freedom of the press, you know. And fearing for their own skins, much of the docile press came
to his defense.
What
Kill
Ohio publisher when they got in our way. Wait until he shows boom up in a Georgia small town for trial, and then boom ... A couple of blasts in his belly and Hey, what happened.^ The ornery bastard wouldn't die. We crippled him good, but he just wouldn't quit. Matter of fact, he
.
. . .
climbed out of his hospital bed feistier than ever, understandably very irritated, burning with a "don't give a damn" spirit. By 1983
he was booming atheism and ridiculing religion and taking fullpage ads in America's most prestigious newspapers, exposing the
scam and threatening to release sex tapes involving Big Brother's pal Bloomingdale and putting together an army of investigative reporters who dug up all sorts of buried scandals. And, he was publishing them in a new magazine, The Rebel. And he was running for President.
Korean
airliner
He was
encouraging others to question authority. The next step was to bust him and lock him up and announce that he was crazy.
Well, this tactic
worked
like a
When
court defending the First Amendment, they busted him for contempt. When he cussed out the nine Supremes, they hit him again with more prison time. In the 200 years of our history, no one,
no one, had
He must
be crazy.
113
TIMOTHY LEARY
Yup. Everyone agreed, the guy flipped out. Cussing judges and shouting in court? He'd gone too far. Of course, Bobby Scale did the same thing during the Chicago Seven Trial, but that v^as 1970
under a Democratic regime. This was 1984, baby, and you can't
at Big B.
And
ential publisher
was shipped
of the Constitution. For what? For speaking out against the system. And not a word of protest.
Just like the docile Russians
rights activist
who
human
Andre Sakharov was nuts for defying the so did American liberals write off Larry Flynt.
inevitable,
Time magazine. My God. What fair play? Even when a dishappened sident publisher is imprisoned in a banana republic like Argentina, the word gets out. For eight months, Flynt was shackled in solitary confinement, and not one important person or journal prothis in
And
not a word of
to the
American sense of
tested.
Even the
liberals
had gone too far. Told the Supreme Court to go fuck itself. Sassed the teacher, acted like a cutup in class and got sent to the detention room in federal
prison. Like that other flake,
whispered among themselves that Larry Flynt He mocked the courts. Played the holy clown.
Lenny Bruce.
Hey, what happened to the American sense of humor? The old Yankee Doodle flourish? The Tom Sawyer caper? Seems like those frontier values have become outmoded. Have
isn't
1776. The
isn't the
is
And
as Big Brother
Ronald told
nothing yet!"
war planned
Bobby
Seale:
Huey
P.
Newton, of
formed
in the
slums of Oakland.
114
Pornography
pleasure after the election, and he's gonna put God and His ministers back in charge of the country. It seems that God is really
pissed off at
all this
humanism and
free lifestyle
and
at
religious
particularly angry But with the help of Big B, God is gonna come back to the schoolroom and to the board room and to the Pentagon
God
is
Democrats
and
liberals.
this sinfulness
once and
But wait a minute. Did you say that Larry Flynt is out of prison? And he's in great shape, calm and cool and wise? You
mean we
he's
months
in the
hold and
breaking his leg and forcing him to break his hunger strike? And back at the helm of Hustler Magazine, planning to expand
bad news
for Big B.
the phone taps pick up? Oh shit, is that for real? The from Larry Flynt is: "You ain't seen nothing yet!" message
What do
115
Sexy Centerfolds
Commander-in-Chief Reagan, General Meese, and the Holy War against the Great Satan
and Jim
Goode,
editor,
of Larry
Flynt
Publications.
It It
was sent to every member of Congress. was reprinted in several foreign languages. Includhope
it
ing Russian.
I
if
any.
What
IS
Is
Pornography?
WHAT phy
My
groaning in scandalized agitation? What is it exactly that Attorney General Meese wants to ban from our lives?
dictionary defines pornography as "written, graphic or other forms of communication intended to excite Sexual Desires."
Is this
bad?
Is
the
Moral Majority
such members of the Sex-Des gang as Hugh Heffner, Bob Guccione, William Shakespeare, Liz Taylor, Thomas Pynchon, Larry
Flynt,
116
Pornography
Before
itans let's
we
turn America's penal system over to these new purlook at the alternatives. If Meese and Reagan and the
want us
to
make
love,
us to
make?
What
Once we
we open up
fascinating squirm-can of thought and discussion. Come to think of it, most acts of public communication are designed to evoke
certain emotions.
stir
Most
so-called
All
news items
propaganda and
advertising
is
What
diets?
we
call
away from
their
"Gluttonography?"
shall
advertisements featuring mouth-watering alcoholic drinks held seductively in the naked arms of alluring
call
What
we
"fuck-me" models? "Lustography?" We are all familiar with the classic ploy of leaders who wish to activate feelings of weakness, paranoia, and fear in their fol-
The goal is to scare us into submission politicians and generals. What shall we call such
lowers.
to
them
the
stuff?
"Propa-
gandography?"
Publications which trigger off a lust for knowledge, an obsessive desire to become smarter and more creative could be called
"intellography." Movies and
ratings. "X-rated" means
TV
this
show
117
TIMOTHY LEARY
mental excellence! "R-rated" promises to reduce the level of your Repetitious Rote thinking. "PC" (Parental Caution) advises
Mom
their stereotypes
is
enhanced. "ASS"
Addicts-
TV
show^s.
The
ical
meaning of the Reagan-Meese-AyatoUah vv^ar on physbeauty becomes clear v^hen w^e pose the question: w^hat is the
real
VIOLENT
knife,
impulses."
What
to
wound
blood, induce physical pain? Gods knows this sort of Rambo progaganda has taken over the American consciousness these days.
Maybe
if
we can
it.
we
call
it
"Rambo-graphy?" "Viologra-
label
graphic, or other forms of communication designed to excite hostile or derogatory feelings towards others.
Pornography
It is
Is
Good; Scornography
Is
Bad
pornography is good, i.e., lifea noble, sometimes funky exaffirming, sacred, natural, joyful
pression or
friendliness,
It is
my
homage
to the
human body,
and practice, Scornography and offensive, i.e., causing anger resentment, and giving offense. which excite to want to hurt others are basiExpressions people
also
my
is
118
Pornography
mean,
sick.
Obscene.
Who
It is
interesting that
most anti-porn
and grey
aesthetic pref-
erences
on
others.
I
Many
of
them
justify this
by claiming to be
like
agents of God.
Scornographers
Commander-in-Chief Reagan, General Meese, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and their legions of obedient fundamentalist followers.
My
I
and that when expressed by those whose motives are reasonably healthy and loving, creates the highest form of human
sacred,
condition.
And, to complete
flesh-wounds,
to
this confessional,
It
revulsion to violence.
disturbs
me
to look at films
which involve
bloodshed.
close-range
is
gunfire,
punch-outs,
sub-human mongoloid monstrosity. Rambo, me, How, one wonders, do these differences arise? Why do some consider love-making sacred and why do others consider it evil? In my case, sexual desires were first activated by printed materials
a small
town
in
Western Massachu-
setts.
dry and
frigid.
Catholic-Puritan
119
TIMOTHY LEARY
Growing up in this God-ridden environment, I was taught that there was one Major Virtue and one Maximum Mortal Sin. Good was to think and act Hke the neighbors. To be proper and decent. Bad? The human body was bad. Any description of or passing reference to sexual functions was bad. Even the mention of genital organs was taboo! Any word or deed which implied acceptance or approval or interest in erotic feelings was Bad. Any actual expression of sexual desire was, of course, beyond bad. Doing
It
was
In
Evil!
my
family, morality
sisters.
was administered by my Mother and By age 12, 1 became aware of their strange
obsession with sexuality. I watched with fascination as they scanned every work of art, every movie, every song, every radio
show
for signs of
dismay that
dying out!
generation,
I
my
"funny business." I also realized, with genetic family, dominated by such anti-sex fervor, was
My
parents' generation
numbered 16
side.
souls.
was
Of my name and
was
cor-
my
early teens,
towards
life
and to punishment
of
As the
last
remaining life-form in
that They, the Anti-sex Gang, were not going to get control of
my
I managed to develop an equally sensitive counter-radar which scanned every word and image in fervent
In short order,
hopes of finding something mischievous, racy, sexy. My first experience with pornography was provided by that
most suggestive of
all
would
sit
at the dining
room
lascivious-
ness, burningly aware of the fundamentalist erection bulging in my trousers while my Mother and Aunts beamed approval from
120
Pornography
knew
The Montgomery Ward mail order catalogue was loaded with pictures of young trollops, shamelessly modeling silken underwear! Pert wantons in nylon hose! Housewife harlots in steamy corsets! Voluptuous nymphets in one piece bathing suits! Sexual
repression
the very sight of bare knee or the rounded outline of
had created such a steamy hot-house atmosphere that tit and ass
produced a hot flame. I recall eye-balling with dreamy lasciviousness a Saturday Evening Post illustration of a young woman swinging on a hammock,
her head tossed back in a gesture of innocent merriment, her white dress and lace petticoat pulled up revealing two inches of
milky, white, soft, tender, moist, kissable inner thigh.
My Porn
In later years, these shy
little
Is
Your Yawn
les-
become the
pre-
cious, delicate, intimate pornography of that culture. Each society and each person develops unique trigger stimuli. For example, the
illustration of the girl
on the hammock-swing which was unbearin 1934 would leave me yawning today. ably porno Even Jerry Falwell would rate it wholesome in the context of
to
me back
1986.
Consider a photo of young men wrestling in an Olympic comin muspetition, locked in sweaty competition, bodies straining
121
TIMOTHY LEARY
cular embrace. Such athletic, clean-cut activity could, for male homosexuals or certain horny, imaginative young women, be-
come
hormone
holocausts.
This poses a problem for orthodox Jewish, Christian, Arab, and Soviet censors. The sexual brain is wired to imprint as trigger
stimuli
any cue that turns one on. The human mind can thus
convert any image into a boot-up for sexual desire. Those sexy
Italians
in a
Vatican-dominated black-
robed repressive culture, have developed an amazing short-hand for soft porn. Almost every fruit, vegetable, every household appliance
mop
is
meaning. Order a zucchini from the waiter in Naples and a ripple of giggles goes round the table. Watch lusty Luigi hold the peach in his hot hand. Observe him slice it open, slowly, slowly. Watch
Luigi dreamily extract the stone, lovingly gaze into
it,
and then
is
Hey,
quit!
it's
an endless
striptease!
The more
that religious
The bedroom joke that won't officials censor words and images
about
genitals, the
of a bodily part.
more suggestive becomes the slightest glimpse The prudish Arabs swathe their women in veils,
lust at the sight of a bare ankle.
Western
this
up with
ladies are
aware of the
allure. I
and
started flirting
and suddenly found ourselves being pulled into enormous luscious nymphomaniac brown eyes as warm and melting as chocolatepudding vaginas. I'm talking about two X-rated, hardcore eyeballs whose wet nakedness was demurely veiled by skillful
fluttering eyelids.
for
sperm-egg
122
Pornography
may
help us understand
if
home-grown
bigots like
Reagan and
culture. Like
Meese
we look
Arab
and Orthodox Jews, most Moslems adhere to a theocratic politic with no separation between church and state.
fanatic Christians
is the high priest of the religion, but in practice, most sensible Moslems recognize that the Sultans, the Shahs, the Nassers, the Ghadafis are all too human.
There
carries
is,
monotheism
sin.
The Iranian
and without
lem here
Most Moslems
The probwith
obvious:
productive
zealots
human
economic or
political
who
The present
meini.
Moslems
is
the Ayatollah
is
God? Kho-
one god, his name is Allah, and that he, the Head Imam, acts for God. And he's got 50 million people, a police force, and an army ready to
every whim. Teenage kids and wild-eyed adults are eager to die for him. Why not? What uneducated person wouldn't give up a dusty life with camels, sand fleas, and no hot water if
kill at his
He
guarantees paradise in return? Who wouldn't? Well, free Americans wouldn't. Because guys like Jefferson and Franklin risked their lives to form a nation
God
Ronnie?
123
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Godfather. My, how the Ayatollah Reagan gushed this great work of art. However, there was one sordid scene that disturbed Nancy and Ron. It was that disgusting
and raved about
episode after the wedding when, in the nuptial chamber, the young virgin bride drops her blouse and walks toward her new
olent
mass execution,
ice
the serv-
The Godfather was a Chernobyl catastromelt-down of phe, decency that showed Hollywood how wanton violence could pay off at the old B.O. But there was that
of organized crime.
a
and marital
one, brief socially-redeeming scene that reflected legal tenderness the one love, shared by a young married couple
How
Why does Ronnie prefer to watch faces convulsing in pain rather than pleasure? It springs from his Midwestern, fundamentalist
Christian beliefs. Although his
PR
staff
it
up,
Reagan has
kinky sect
lah,
made known
is
it
an adherent of that
Reagan
God
chosen
Armageddon battle against the forces of Satan, the Black King of Democrats, heretics, fun-lovers, and the sexually sane.
Ronnie and Meese
truly, sincerely, honestly believe that
it is
their policies.
124
Pornography
Most
Christians (and
all
damentalist claims to be special agents of God monstrous and sinful. But there is undeniable appeal there. Life can at times seem
confusing, baffling, frustrating. There are so many points of view and ways to go. Everyone, at times, longs for some certainty,
some
what
to do.
it's all
And then
very sim-
the Fundamentalists
ple.
come
My
mud,
is
One
disagrees
a hell-bound, heathen, heretic dupe of the devil permitted to loot, enslave, and kill.
whom
you are
Now
Freedom of Speech
as
guaranteed by the
Bill
of Rights.
The trouble comes, when Fundamentalist fanatics get their cruel, unforgiving hands on the wheels of government and start using the courts and the police and the military to enforce their weird beliefs. The great enemy of any dictatorship is, of course,
free speech, free press.
liberties to others.
Fueled
unshakable sense of moral superiority, convinced that God by has elected them to be His favorites, they feel it is their duty to
crush, without mercy, heretics, disbelievers,
and
political rivals.
No
These guys simply have no sense sense of sportsmanship or mutual respect or rein action.
100%
with
the time.
They
can't relax
fair
Pornography
Is
Freedom
Self-appointed agents of
God
it
125
TIMOTHY LEARY
\
and pleasure and fun and intimate communication. These are the loose, giggly human feelings which encourage disrespect for God and Authority. Pornography loosens the
dividual.
state's control of the in-
unauthorized ways. Theocratic leaders love Scornography because feelings of violence can be easily manipulated and directed towards real or
Pornography
There
is
Is
the Touchstone of
Freedom
measure the
in-
one
test
which
any country. Freedom of the press, and in partoleration of ticular, open pornography. The countries of Europe which are the most democratic are those which allow the expressions of sexual love and bodily dex of freedom
in
beauty. Sweden.
less free the country, the more censorship of pornography. For decades, Portugal and Spain were held captive to the dictatorships of Salazar and Franco. When the hated dictators passed
The
on, the very day after the democratic regimes assumed power, the
stores started
1986 when the Rambo-Reagan-Meese glorification magazines of warfare, bombing civilians, and Star Wars were reaching their
peak.
126
Pornography
to
when a nation's top cop is a zealot, a one religious or political point of view. Which brings us to the newest Darth Vader enemy of the loveforce, Edwin Meese. Perhaps if we can track his roots we can
understand and neutralize his ruthless self-righteousness.
Ed Meese grew up in Oakland, California, in a tight-knit family of ethnocentric German immigrants whose strict authoritarian attitudes made them ill-equipped for any profession except government bureaucrat. The Meese family belonged to the Missouri
Synod of the Lutheran church, a
literalism,
its
its
biblical
its
abject
would be inconceivable for Meese to have selected a profession which required intelligent choice, free competition, independent decisions, and tolerant harmony with others. Meese couldn't operate in a free-trade scene.
He
official.
team
the
sports.
Meese was not to be found on the sportsmanship and the give-and-take of No, young Sunday school Edwin was a member of
Oakland High School military club, the Sabers. At Yale University, Meese was a mediocre student, but made
for his inability to think by enthusiastic participation in conthe debating team, the Lutheran student or-
up
servative activities
We
all
know
the type.
127
TIMOTHY LEARY
Meese's twisted attitudes toward pain-pleasure, love, and war are reflected in the bizarre circumstances of his wedding. His
bride, Ursala,
was
on a naval
The marriage reception was held in an officer's club base. The wedding cake was cut with a military
about that for kinky Third Reich symbolism, this weird mixture of Christian Soldier piety and state-authorized
sabre!
How
murder!
The Tax
Edwin Meese adheres
Bureaucratic power
tioningly obey.
is
Collector's Son
best de-
is
The
state
is
everything.
You
docilely
You
power of
Note
that
none of Edwin's
fiercely
German
open-market, competitive-capitalistic bone in their These body. guys, brought up in a suspicious, closed, ethnic sect, despise American fair play. These guys simply don't understand
enterprise,
our flamboyant, Yankee Doodle, free-agent, good-natured spirit. Hey, who has to play fair when you're doing the work of God
state.
who
had
the
to
life on government payrolls, never where the worry money was coming from. Ed's dad was
Tax
Collector.
is
one word which can explain most of the conflict, violence, and warfare which currently plagues humanity. The same word explains Ed Meese's crusade. That word is theocracy.
There
The dictionary
defines
or government officials
128
Pornography
meet theocrat Ed Meese: Scourge of Liberals and Secular Humanists.
As we have
all
Anyone who
evil.
is propelled by that danknow^n as moral righteousness. disagrees with His God and His politics is immoral,
come
to learn,
Ed Meese
Remember when Ed
the Bill of Rights
called the
American
Civil Liberties
Union
a "criminals' lobby" and thus, in one mean-spirited phrase, sabres and the Jeffersonian tradition? And this guy
this
plump bureaucrat,
whose fat snout has been buried in life, announced that there was no
hunger problem in the United
paying for
ther King's
it."
"authoritative" evidence of a
States.
is free,
Remember when Meese infuriated Blacks by using Martin Luname to attack affirmative action? Recall when Meese instructed the Justice Department to protect
Teamster President Jackie Presser? When he decided not to prosecute the executive of E. F. Hutton after they were nabbed in a
flat-out fraud case?
When
smugglers?
got jobs at the federal hog-trough for who had given him loans or helped
failed to
by law?
for a
promotion to Colonel
Army
Army
regulations?
129
TIMOTHY LEARY
How
can
we
man who
claims to be religious,
slippery-
patriotic, and law-abiding? Is it another case of the Nixon hypo-cracy on the part of the nation's top cop?
Nope.
It's
just
humanity
another example of the disease that has tortured few thousand years. Theocratic fanaticism.
who declared a Holy Crusade against Arabs for God and plunder. Like every Islamic crackpot who shrieks "Jihad:
colonists
who,
for
killing, looting, raping the heathen for Like the sternly white-Protestant government of South Afprofit. rica. Like every religious fanatic in history, Edwin Meese sincerely
believes that he
and
vinely authorized to use their powerful positions to reward their friends, punish and indeed kill their rivals. If you take what you
want
in
God's name,
is
that stealing?
If
is
How
naive of
me
to ask!
are having a
moment, no doubt
and law enforcement apparatus of the greatest country in the their Crusade against Affirmative
Communism,
Ghadafi,
Good
130
Pornography
don't
it's
want to ring you down from your morality high lads, but time you learned a certain historical lesson. Listen: You
win
elections
control-freaks can
and manipulate the press and whip up war-paranoias. Agent of God, around in cars Ed, riding police sneering and scorning the godless
You can
liberals.
You can
You can
stand
tall
and threaten the Russians. But when you tangle with pornography, the celebration of Love Impulse and Physical Beauty, you're
out of your league, plump wimp.
When you
attack sexual
mag-
netism and erotic desire you're outmatched. Your cruel saber slashing into the soft, sweet, yielding wedding cake?
take,
ROTC A mis-
like
it,
children.
Sure,
you can
and sexual
desire.
You can
get
warning
store owners.
You can
tler
bomb
you can
suppress the wild, pulsing love impulse that has kept Hfe evolving
on
It's
Ron and
in. It
Ed,
let
me
tell
a secret.
The
secret of
you something you don't want to hear. life. Better not call Nancy and Ursala
later on.
Here's an update on The Situation, lads. You've got yourself in a real bad mess. You really fucked up lads. You've signed up
for the losing battle of
No
time.
The Big Game. wonder you're so worried and angry and warlike
all
the
We can understand your paranoid feelings of being surrounded by a breeding, seething sea of sexually-aroused hostile
life-forms.
You
set yourselves
up to
insult
131
TIMOTHY LEARY
-\
cess.
The
you
can't even
conceive of
you
call
so varied and uncontrollable and promiscuous don't even have a proper name for it. You call it Sin. You
It's
it
Bad and
Scientists call
Poets describe
netic,
it
Magit.
Darv^inian.
Up
in
Boston,
it.
democratic
beans
do
it.
Argentines-without-means do
Some
ille-
And
she's everywhere!
Fucking
Breeding. Seeding.
Your soft-skinned enemy is always thinking up new ways to outwit you, Ed, trying to look better, dressing up, oiling its skin.
It's
hot-looking.
It
Soviet commissars.
You can pass laws against it, hire Czars to control it, jail those who glorify it. You can organize your 19 84- Anti-Sex Leagues. But
you can never stop
it.
You know
that, don't
Is
that
why
you're
preparing the final Solution, the all-out mageddon Plan? You're not gonna turn
lipstick
it
War on
tail at
Life?
The Ar-
and run
like a
out in one
final slug-fest.
coward. You're gonna stand fast and have You're gonna arm yourself with au-
Not
to
mention biological
weapons,
acid
rains,
paraquat sprays, agent orange mists, chemical warfare strikes, and industrial
technologies guaranteed to
blow
off the
ozone
layer.
you're hell-bent on rooting out, suppressing, mechanizing, crushing every manifestation of the smiling,
No
question about
it,
sexy, dirty
life
force.
You
come down
guys can't wait until the antiseptic Leto lay waste the preterite heathens
132
Pornography
faithful androids
up
But it won't work, boys. Even Jesse Helms and Reverend Pat Robinson can't help you censor that four letter word you fear the
most, that four-billion-year tribute to sexual desire.
Helms was the primary advocate for school prayer and the death penalty, and a major enemy of the National Endowment for the Arts.
133
New York,
October 1966. Leary presents "The Reincarnations of Jesus Christ." Leary's League of Spiritual Discovery hopes to distribute LSD and marijuana as sacraments to its members.
UP I/Cor bis-Bettmann
1966. The original UPI caption reads: "A mandala of the 'Earth Mother,' a mattress and cushions resting on the floor and used
Tim
instead of chair, couch or bed these are part of the 'world' of Leary. Perhaps his 'world' may seem strange to some. But it
is
is
willing to
1967. Santi
Visalli Inc./Archive
Editor's Note:
The following
series
series
was
originally titled
He-
donic Psychology, or The Psychology of Pleasure. A small portion of the text was published in Psychology
Today
in
January 1973,
Psychedelic Psychology
THE BEGINNING
WOULD
LIKE
TO SAY
I'm speaking for Rosemary, or rather I would Speaking say she is speaking through me. I'm also speaking for our extended family, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a group of 40
for.
IN I'm
or 50 people
who
There are going to be no dogmatic facts or statements laid down. It's simply our trip. That's the way it's got to be. You know, I'm sure, by now, that you must never believe anyone's
statements about their
trip.
Does
it
interest
you and
all
stir
up
thoughts in
you?
so very different. Yes,
it's
We're
system
is
all
one.
The
unified.
But
we
members: your wife, your closest friends. You live with them for many, many years and then you discover that you can't transfuse
blood for them. Different blood types. The calcium in our bones may be different. If we have to pass on organs then perhaps we have to seek hematologically similar strangers. The more we understand about the complexities about biochemistry, the more we
realize that the diseases that
we
are different.
We
exist as
unique uni-
137
TIMOTHY LEARY
verses.
trips
I
And
this
on each other. remember many years ago, when I was a psychologist living in the Berkeley Hills, I was unfortunate enough one night to have to go to some sort of parent/teachers meeting as a psychological expert and talk about child-rearing. It really made me feel bad. I
never did
it
again, because
would say
would have very little to do with 50% of the people there, except maybe to lay a new alien trip on them. Maybe for 25% of the people it would be the right thing to say and for 25% of the people it would be exactly the wrong thing to say. This is not a matter of despair, and it's not to suggest that these differences are in any way ominous. As a matter of fact, that's the aesthetic part
of the game, to appreciate these differences and start harmonizing and merging them. This is no guru-student game. We're all here to be gurus for
each other and your guru is always popping up in the strangest places. Basically each of us is his own guru, but we can get help
from moment to moment, from day to day, from anyone that's likely to come along. Almost everything that I've ever said I have
learned from gurus who were half my age. The good teacher picks out a question that's important to him or you and he invites you
on the
quest.
Before going on to the more formal topic which is the Hedonic Revolution and the Psychology of Pleasure, I'd like to say a little
more about where we're at to avoid misunderstanding drugs, and perhaps your own perspective of who I am. I'd like to lay out some myths or misapprehensions
bit
about
LSD
you
won't be
irritated or
138
false?
think
my
answer to
this
myth
is
fairly obvious.
think that you should take psychedelic drugs for kicks. There's this weird illusion that dope should have a practical reward. Marijuana's all right, for example,
raise
if it
your income. We're just beginning the neurological revolution. We know now that we can change consciousness. It doesn't
make any
difference
your own
ural freedom.
interesting experience once on a stage like this at MIT. was having a debate with Professor Letvin. He's a psychiatrist I had been somewhat friendly with when I was at Harvard. He stood on a stage and said that he didn't want to debate on the dangers of LSD and marijuana because there was nothing to be worried about. The main issue was moral was I the devil? and that's pretty far out for an MIT psychiatrist in 1967 or whenever it was to stand there and talk to MIT people and talk about the
I I
had an
devil.
my
life. I felt
for the
first
time that
issue
at least
was about. He
good was
the logical,
and anything that threatened to loosen or divert or turn off for one minute this divine manifestation of two billion revolutions
was
the devil.
Now
139
TIMOTHY LEARY
drugs plus electric rock and roll to be the most powerful revolutionary agents man has ever know^n. It's so obvious and so logical
and empirically demonstrable. When anyone in any country in the world today including America, Europe, Western Europe,
Eastern Europe, anyone
ing something that
who
is illegal.
own
in his
own
government Peking or in Moscow or in Stockholm or in Washington, "I don't believe the government
behavior, say to the
is
Turning on is a political act. It's the kind of political act that most characteristic of the new revolution which is the hedonic
revolution.
ons are
The weapons here are not Molotov bombs. The weapthe radiant eye and the smiling face, the holy orgasm
as a revolutionary
weapon
it
A
If
tionary agents
you want
to turn
you into a conspiracy immediately. on you can't go to the drugstore, right, and
mail in a coupon to get your dope. You have to engage in a rather risky contract with someone that you trust enough and that trusts
you enough.
in a perfect
Now this
efficiency
loving, benevolent
way. But
still I
exist
and the
it
network does not work would say that the dope network does and the loyalty and the brotherhood and
develops is a socioeconomic fact that has been overlooked by most of our scholars.
sisterhood
Now
on that
is
ex-
tremely important. immediately puts you on the right side in the cowboys and Indians game or the cops and robbers game or
your neighborhood when you were a example. Das Kapital. And just suppose Roseit
in
mary and I could get in our time machine and go back and knock on his door and we'd walk in and say, "Karl, baby, I've got something here for you, something that
is
140
student body of the University of of the Cossacks and into the free
man game."
Another, fourth, and the most important revolutionary aspect of the psychedeUc strength is that it does internally, neurologically, vy^hat
it is doing outside, symbolically. You see, the symbolic forms or the behavioral forms of revolution are placards and pick-
and demonstrations, storming the Bastille, and burning draft cards, and these are important and necessary at a particular moeting
ment. But they're short-lived. And they really don't change a lot of minds. They tend to solidify a position: You burn your draft
card and
everyone a little more seriously. These are but the symbolic acts, revolutionary act of taking a psychedelic drug is very important because it anarchizes your nervous system.
it
solidifies
It
does the same thing inside that you want to do outside, that
is
liberate.
Now
that we're
on
this topic
this:
The
Fifth
ON. THE BLACKS DON'T LIKE TO TAKE LSD. Well, I don't know about that. I have talked to most
black militant leaders in the country and not one of them said he'd throw me in jail when he took over. As a matter of fact,
fact, a
on than whites.
routine here.
I
I'm not going into any liberal, masochistic don't feel badly about this because I can say flatly
Now
that almost everything important I've learned in the last eight years about how to live a life of joy and increasing love and
I've learned
went to India and studied with brown people over ple. there. And I've listened to the rhythms and to the messages and to the teachings of the black Americans. Soul on Ice is a very
That
is, I
141
TIMOTHY LEARY
powerful statement of the turned on position and of course, the
red Indians are here to teach us a great deal.
Another interesting thing about the black movement: It's very important that we're clear about what's happening. The blacks
did you say? Well, that's exBlacks are saying, We're dropactly ping out of the American system of reward and punishment, that
are in favor of dropping out.
What
is.
what
the black
movement
school,
That's
that
is
We want our own we want our own thing. department, meant by the term drop out. You drop out and
and
ridiculous.
do your own
thing.
We
our black prophets and our black gurus. Another side of the issue here is that all the black
is
man wants
a white
woman. Maybe
in the early
You've got to accept the fact that if God is here in any form, she is here in the form of a colored woman. The dark goddess has always been the source of basic
true for a very small minority.
was
Now
the Sixth
Myth
It's
the liberal
New York Times, San Fran"DRUGS LIKE LSD AND MARIJUANA SHOULD BE AVAILABLE TO RESEARCH SERIOUS-MINDED, APPROVED, FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH ..."
Well,
that
if
I
want
and now,
anyone
is
can change
my
going to have control over the chemicals which mind, the last person I want to have control over
I want want my brothers and sisters have control over my mind and I want you to,
these chemicals
is
Rosemary
at the
and
ranch to
142
You
re-
that research
.
country. Research
do research on
experience?
ecstasy,
can you do research on happiness, can you can you do research on your spiritual
Obviously you
can't.
Maybe
we'll learn
you want to and if that's your thing, do it. something from it. I'm very impressed, for exIf
ample, by the research that Johnson and Matthews did on the sexual experience.
It's
perfectly analogous
they recorded all the physiological events that occurred during, before, and after orgasm and it's a great deal. I think maybe a lot of people can benefit by reading that book but I
don't think that the only time you should have sex
search.
atrists
I
is
when
it's
re-
can
if
you get
some government
psychi-
studying the sexual response, you'd really have a heavy thing. We gave this couple intelligence tests during the event and their IQ dropped. They can't even divide 7 into 100 backwards.
Matter of
they're copulating.
The
social intelligence
destroyed completely.
noises.
And what
it
Laymen
are best
known
using volunteers at the Reproductive Biological Research Foundation in St. Louis. Their reports, Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inade-
quacy, were wildly popular in the late '60s and early '70s.
143
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Seventh Myth.
that IT'S
comment
is
IL-
LEGAL.
True or False? Well,
fact,
I
it
at
all.
Matter of
just
know
How
licens-
sex
is illegal
you have
my planet. I said, "Lovemaking down you have to have a government license to do it." And it really blew their minds up there. Now you know you're on the right track in the pursuit of freedom and ecstatic pleasure and God if you're in
it. I
do
here,
When we
were
at
you're not you have to worry a little Harvard, matter of fact the guy that threw
if
made
this statement.
He
said,
"Ma-
and LSD:
is
It's like
goldfish swallowing,
it's
a fad."
Now
one of the leading social psychologists in the country. If you have any messianic or visionary solution to make everyone happy and joyous and loving and you start talking about it
set
man
and
up a
little
shop or
is
and you do
it
it
and
starts
My
month when
No,
can
I
opinion of Scientology has just tripled in the last I see that they're getting in trouble. They must be
forth.
legalize
freedom.
we can expect that a controlled society You can't expect it. There is a risk involved.
is
experience
is
something that
you
up on the easy
Wilhelm Reich: Austrian psychoanalyst and author of The Function of the Orgasm and The Sexual Revolution^ Reich was convinced on the importance
of regular orgasms for the mental health of
the
invented
collect
144
a risk
what
are
you playing
for?
Now
and
forth,
that
WORSE.
I'm not sure whether
unfold you.
It
think
it
may
may
you weren't
aware of and again we've got to be realistic about this. They can't be good or bad in the social sense or even the psychological sense.
We
The
DNA code
does play a
just lots of
heavy karmic,
not sure that anything happens during or after LSD that wouldn't have happened anyway. It may have speeded it up. A lot of people were confronted with their inevitable psychosis at the age of eighteen instead of the age of
fifty
when
Now,
is
some
country and in every race, in every culture. So one out of ten people in their lifetime has a severe long-term
apparently in every
is
mental breakdown. In our country, say, one out of ten to end up in a mental hospital sooner or later.
going
days the hoax was that LSD made people crazy, so that people took LSD and something strange was happening. So a fellow says, "Oh, I'm crazy." They'd go to UCLA
in the early
Now
hospital
that
was
you
crazy,
there's
their
was the trip Time Magazine: LSD makes Well, that hoax is over now but
in in this
room
DNA code
Well, after eight or ten years of it, I can only conclude that LSD probably prevents the number of inevitable psychoses. Where it
145
TIMOTHY LEARY
does help them unfold,
it
does
it
the drug that's doing it, not like you masturbated at the age of three or something like that or whatever
it's
your heavy karmic trip is. At the present moment I would say that some people have entered the mental hospital after taking LSD but far fewer than you would expect statistically. The same
is
true of suicide.
is
The
suicide rate
five
get
Brittanica
hundred people
think
or an eight-year-span will
themselves.
it's
a miracle,
LSD
They're well-reported. I think we can say that LSD has cut down the suicide rate because you go through so many death-rebirth
experiences in any ten seconds of a
trip,
why
messy
details?
Now
there
is
boils
down
to
50-50 choice, good-bad, health-illness. You're never going to get the odds better than 50-50 at any one second so that I don't think
that
LSD
always a
paradox and
any moment or at that moment of confrontation is open say "yes" instead of "no" and hope for the best. So much for wild claims on what LSD does for you.
all
you can do
at
Now in Myth Number Nine we have here the statement that LSD BREAKS CHROMOSOMES.
I wish they did. This is an evolutionary exand I see chromosomes and white blood corpuscles simperience ply as an outside layer of communication. They have nothing to do with the germ plasm. So we're prepared to accept the fact that
LSD
could break
It
down chromosomes,
leave a
know snap,
when you
crack.
would
communication message
146
like
LSD
chromosomes. This was a hoax. That's a pretty heavy thing to say that something will affect your unborn children. The antipleasure forces have run through a series of dire warnings.
enough they ran through exactly the same warnings that the AMA was running through a hundred years ago. Rosemary brought back from a swap meet she's addicted to swap meets anyhow, a book leather-bound and gold. I opened
Interestingly
most impressive book I'd ever seen, parchment was written by an MD who lived in Boston one paper. hundred years ago and it had the imprimatur and the stamp of
it
up.
It
was
the
And
it
the
Massachusetts Medical
Society,
Society, and the Boston Globe, and the New York Times. Everyone said "Read this book." And I opened it up and I read the chapter on self-abuse. It was titled Self-Abuse: How
Church Medical
It
Rises
and
Is
Maintained.
realized that
was
in the
hands of
either a great
really unbelievable.
humorist or a terribly guilty masturbator. It was He laid down a whole trip on masturbation
and
it
was
exactly
said,
tell
what
today.
He
can always
you know, first of all it makes you crazy. You one when you see them. They have a kind of an
about them.
He
said in particular
you can
tell
how the
Not
mental hospital you'll be absolutely put you but that's not the worst part certain to go to a mental hospital
only will
of
in a
it.
Really,
it's
a disease.
And
I
there are
all
sorts of diagnostic
clues as to
how
to pick
one out.
can
He
how much
The
. .
the
boy or
girl lies
to me,
it is
. . .
tell
one when
see them."
.
but one
is
is
that masturbation
a disease
which
really
worse than typhoid because with typhoid maybe you back on your feet but once a masturbator is on the road to
147
TIMOTHY LEARY
pleasure, hedonism,
and sexuality
ill
it's
power
The masturbator
all.
if
just
won't buckle
down
But worst of
all, if
you don't
our
your body, your parents, your country, and so children. Masturbation leads to monsters.
I'll
be talking in the third of these lectures, talking about the psychedelic communities, about LSD babies and how they're con-
grow up and blow our minds. But I will say this that the chromosome hoax is pretty well accepted now as what it started out to be: the chromosome hoax. There's a friend of mine that works for the government and when the chromosome thing came out he was very worried. He's
ceived and
they're
how
born and
how
they
And
and he was very alarmed because his wife was pregnant, and they had had two babies before he and she had taken LSD, and he was very concerned. So
for spiritual purposes
LSD
being very responsible and conscientious he had his blood taken and sent over to the study that was doing this and the scientists
came back, and said, "Wow, your blood you've had it." So he was really very worried. All during the period of pregnancy he was worried about it. When the baby was born, the baby was
perfect, so he
began thinking about it. And then the other studies came out, casting doubt on it so he decided he was going to get involved in a study that was being done, a double blind study
where the person counting the chromosomes didn't know where they came from. And they knew that some people had taken LSD
to be analyzed in this double blind thing
and they knew that others hadn't and they were sending them off and he took his blood
it into the LSD group. He knew it was there but men who were counting it didn't and the results came back. Number one: The LSD samples did not have an increase in chro-
and he snuck
the
148
mosome
breaks.
to
make
this a
happy
story:
He
does not have chromosome breaks himself and the whole thing was a scandal which put his wife and himself through a very
heavy and worrisome period of three or four months. Of course, that's what has been done in a very, I would say, sadistic way to
thousands and thousands of young people who have to worry about their chromosomes because of a complete fabrication.
Now
I'll
run through
briefly
some of
a Tenth
Myth
that IT'S
ALL RIGHT
like
LITTLE,
them have
is
Well, the
if
medium
television
we have
the future
see the
well-represented.
lot of
know
that
human
nature
an economic society like transactions with drugs although increasingly less with LSD but still I would say that all of the economic groups who are out
unloving things that happen in our own. And money is involved in many
making money in this country, the holiest I know, and I've met and talked to many of them, are dealers. This was taught out in the Catholic Church which is a very very sophisticated psychedelic organization. The Catholic Church
had a big heresy controversy. They
said that the holy host, the sacrament of the Catholic Church, once it was consecrated, is supposed to be the body and blood of God. Now if that host is
is a sinner, who has taken money And the answer came down: "Yes, medium is the message." And the
149
TIMOTHY LEARY
message can pass through the hands of CBS or NBC or ABC and the soap salesmen but still it's happening and it's happening in an electronic flashing way. I believe another group that's very misunderstood are the rock and
having a
festival
roll
promoters. Well, you say, they're in all these rock and roll bands
lot of
money on
their
unfortunate
still
system shaken up a
little
Now another myth, the Eleventh Myth: PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS MAY BE OKAY FOR RESPONSIBLE ADULTS BUT CERTAINLY NOT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
Of
course,
it's
young people
are closer to
the divine process than old people, closer to their bodies, to their code and the whole thing. The whole revsenses, to their
DNA
happening today, comes from exactly the people that supposedly are not ready or mature or serious enough to discover heaven on earth.
olution, everything that
is
The
final
myth
is
that
THE
HIPPIE
MOVEMENT IS
OVER.
Movement is defined by Time Magazine, bonded by Haight-Ashbury, the Park. Yeah, it's mysterious and miraculous. The divine process sweeps through the world and
the Hippie
Of course,
You know, the divine process, she the Mississippi a hundred years ago and they are going round with the sailboats and the legends hoping she'll come
maybe through
swept
the galaxy.
down
back. She hit Haight-Ashbury, baby, and she there and she went on. And, of course, there
left
her message
in
left
was no LSD
Haight-Ashbury through
for the country.
all
of the time.
Most
It is
of the people
But what
is
happening
is
far
from dead.
an
invisible spir-
150
it
has pro-
In the beginning,
words, psychedelic psychology is how to turn on. It's how to reach the unconditioned state and how to preserve it, and it's
about the relationship between the unconditioned and the conditioned state of mind.
Turned on, of course, means to turn off your social conditioning reward and punishment, and let the older energies inside your
body take
the
over.
Now we
most important but perhaps the only issue. The hedonic gap divides human beings or divides one part of our self from each
other.
It's
the issue.
And
it
can be conflict or
it
can be a harmo-
nious dialogue between that part of us or those among us who want to have everything controlled according to the current social
ideas of right
free
and
natural.
Technically, this
conditioned
nious union
state.
is
defined in
many ways
it's
One
of course, goes on inside of us as a psychological conflict. part of us has been socially conditioned to want to do ouris,
knows
151
TIMOTHY LEARY
that
it's
really
conflict.
It happens every second of your life and mine, and in every encounter w^ith someone else. Usually w^e try to make them feel a little
better or bring
It's
encounter.
level,
them dov^n a little. That's called the hedonic more important than economics. At the political I'm audacious enough to believe that's the basis of the whole
thing. Certain social groups don't like the fact that other social groups are having more fun or are closer to God or closer to
Now^
so
fifty
much
years ago, maybe even tw^enty years ago, there was anti-Semitism in this country. I think that much of it was
fact that the Gentile
Jewish people were having more fun. They were spending their money instead of worrying about it and they were more involved in sensual experiences
due to the
was
and
Jewish people are getting more and more Protestantized. A new scapegoat has had to come along. I read Eldridge Cleaver and it's
clear to
me that what he says: It's partly envy Whitey just don't know how to do it anymore, so he controls others with guns and
handcuffs and so forth. The hippies and the longhairs are another
new scapegoat. The fact is that I wired this back to our planet: It's still illegal down here to look as if you're having too much fun. It's still more respectable to be sick than well and if you just laugh too much
you're really going to get them after you.
Now
is
conditioning.
And
Eldridge Cleaver: Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party, Pres-
and author of the best-selling Soul on Ice, Cleaver gave Rosemary and Timothy Leary in the Black Panther's Algerian government-in-exile. Rosemary and Timothy were betrayed by Cleaver and held as his captives. They escaped to Switzerland.
idential candidate,
refuge to
152
Now you all know what conditioning you through the Pavlovian trips very briefly because it's very relevant to what's happening with each and every one of us today. The Pavlov conditioning trip has cast two main
of this
is.
word
conditioning.
characters. There
is I.
P. Pavlov.
won
the
Nobel
I
Prize 1904.
in
it
gig because
for the
is
was
here
He was born in 1849, died 1936, He was a physiologist. I know that in California. You just nominate me
Nobel
Prize.
the rat.
Now
I'm on the
all
do
I
it
together,
The other important participant in this drama rat's side. I want us both to live, let's I but got to be on the rat's side in this particular
all
case.
think that Pavlov had a great deal to learn from this par-
ticular rat
I
and we
have a great deal to learn from the rat. people say "rat, rat." It's a pretty bad thing
to call your attention to the fact that a
to be, a rat.
want you
human
race
is
homicidal and
destroying every
its
murderous rage
form of animal
life
on
won't be any mammal species left that were prepared for the supermarket plastic-wrapped. And the only animal that will be around is the rat. Now that's really fantastic.
How
it?
He must
be smarter than
we
are.
We know
than any
more
human
being.
And
is
so hip to
Well
how
when
the rat
dirt,
was here
man?
Who
anyway? Before
this rat,
man came
you know
he's like
you or
I,
he's
I.
P. Pavlov:
Nobel
coined the term "conditioned" to describe acquired reflexes observed in the studies of circulatory, digestive, and nervous systems of dogs. His findings
led to the foundation of behavioral psychology.
153
TIMOTHY LEARY
doing his thing and he's got his wife and his kiddies and he's working. Probably the rat thing is not all gravy. You know,
there's foxes
and the climate's changing and so forth, but he's in and everything is on that expectancy
computer and he smells and he sniffs and he can feel the earth in the spring and he knows when it's time to get up and he can triple-think the approach of a hawk and, boy, he's really an exmachine, he's doing fine. One day he's wandering around looking for some food for his wife and the kiddies and he smells
quisite
something extremely delicious. And he runs over and it's what we call cheese and he runs up to it and then wham, a big cage comes
down
Now
books,
they don't
tell
you
in the
psychology
course
when
they
tell
rats. In the
two or
about
pretty
and
kiddies:
gets worried
to eat?
And
soon he had to worry about himself: Will he have enough to eat? And who were these strange people, anyway? Now what does the rat want? Does he want what you and me want? He wants out
and back to
He wants
three days,
laboratory. So after
is hungry enough, an interesting thing happens to the rat. There's an enormous clang of a bell and suddenly right in front of him was a delicious piece
two or
when he
of cheese. Groovy. He says, "That was delicious, man, but it wasn't very much." Well, another half-hour, bang, another piece of cheese. Well, you know what happened. That's called primary
enough trials it got so that Pavlov could just do the bang and the rat would salivate and get all ready for the hunger. Now you see, God and the DNA code have worked for
conditioning. After
two billion years to design this rat perfectly to salivate when there was something real to eat not to salivate when Ivan Pavlov wanted him to salivate. Because Pavlov had perceptually copped
the rat's mind.
154
it
under the
from
bells
and
Now in
the next
it's
series of
gun and he's got the food, and you've got to play the game. You're looking, though, always, for
he's got the
man and
escape.
And
maze,
little
this alleyway,
then one day the cage door opened and he ran down this and he looked to the left and there was a
jumped over there and, wow, there's an electric grid. Mmm! Phew! He looked around and there's another maze over there and it's a delicious
smell
and he crawls up to
as they got
it.
Yeah,
it's all
He
As long
you
in their cage,
Or to bring it a little closer to home, wife in the Berkeley Hills and she's got
so
it all set,
many
bells
and buzzers
in that
knows
time to eat
when
the
buzzer goes off, the electric range goes zip, and the doorbell rings, and her husband's there, and the electric guard in the garbage
goes up, and
it's all fine.
all
window
most horrible
out there, playing on the front lawn, naked. Well, she puts all of her things on auto-computer hold and rushes out to the lawn and says, "What are you doing? What are you a sexual pervert.^ Want
to get your father fired
from
Want
to
grow up
155
TIMOTHY LEARY
been through that time and time and time again. We if we hadn't. We'd be on some beach someplace without our clothes on. I know there's a door here someplace we
We've
all
wouldn't be here
can
all
get out
when
we're ready.
The
wrong?
It
was
off.
the
first
day of
so
spring and
to feel
was so sunny I took my shoes the earth, and I could almost feel
I
Gee,
it felt
the energy
I
coming
feel
took
my
you know,
right."
could
the
just
seemed
right.
Then what's
right?
is
how
it
We
have
way
stay
the system
works
those.
is:
maneuver
to
around
here, if you're
If
good
away from
You have
keep checking.
ment some day you too can get to have your finger on the button of the electric grid. The message of this society is that the sensible
man
is the one who's got the power over the people. He's got the boots or he's got the handcuffs or he's got the guns or he's got the atomic bombs or he's got the sheriff behind him or whatever. Uh huh. I just gotta say that the power control trip is a bummer. It's a bummer. Because you can never win because you can control and you can bust them and you can line them up and you can make them have ID cards and draft cards and you can keep them, but you've got to keep them every minute in that cage where you control the food and the reward because if they escape for a min-
ute ..
You know,
now
they have compulsory education, and then you get the draft going, and economics and so forth. You've got to have that power over their bellies so they can't go to the supermarket, right. But it's no
156
it
going
all
of the time.
And
there
on
full
why
with
over me.
they get ulcers. It's that pyramid of who's got the button It's all a system of everyone conditioning everyone else,
fear.
Sometimes, when I talk about pleasure people don't know what to think. If you've never been very high your concept of pleasure
is
"Wow,
we've got a good police force in our town. Yea, I got a raise, yea, I got a mistress and I sleep with my secretary, too, yeah, right.
And
they advertise, yea, reward. That's the secondary or the tertiary or the quaternary conditioned sense. It has very little to do with what God worked
for
my own
two
billion years to
is
situation.
is
the
The
the
fascinating thing
about
it is
that
when you
think about
it
human
systems of
reward and punishment that are laid down to us in America are really very unimaginative and rather limited. What are the range
of mythic roles you can play here.^ What Well you have channel 7 and channel
is
8, right?
We
are
all
moving
in, as
you
all
know,
to a
new
era.
And
here
I'm very indebted to Professor Herbert Marcuse of San Diego. Eros and Civilization is really a powerful statement in very scholarly terms.
going on. Marcuse points the Freudian theory was that there
is
was the reality and there was pleasure. Isn't that weird? Reality and pleasure as though pleasure is not real. Of course, what Freud meant by reality was work. Because of economic scarcity
157
TIMOTHY LEARY
you had to work.
sically erotic
We
but
we have
it.
off because
we
can't afford
to turn
it
on and do
Well, that's
electric psy-
made
The
was
known about
in the last
It
one hundred years that we've had a society which is completely conditioned, three and four and five times away from
It's as though the curse of conditioning of nervous systems that has gone on for millions of years this way has zipped up to us in the last one hundred years. This anthill, this
is
very new.
person was much closer to nature, much closer to the rhythms of the seasons, and he got his fingers into Mother Nature's bosom and he was much less conditioned than he is now with today's
proliferation of conditions
The pendulum
this
is
upon conditions upon conditions. swinging back and what we're all involved
in
room
is
when
a social
for hundreds
pendulum, and
thousands of years, begins to swing back. That's a very exciting time because it's going faster when it's just coming down. Or it
seems the decline or the going up seems more accelerated. We are all riding the exultant tide of maybe three or four thousand years
of repression which culminated in the mechanical society that's
running Washington today. And it's thrilling but it's somewhat risky. Yeah. But it's a very exciting place to be and I know you
can
all feel
up around
us.
There are certain practical things that we should know about these historical and evolutional events, to have more fun and apgoing to be a big change in lifetalks about the society of play styles happening already. and display. It's all going to be an erotic beauty trip, but, of course, this is not the way it is today. The models that are held
preciate
it
more
clearly. There's
Marcuse
158
up
psychologists, are chosen, of course, because they represent the virtues of the
conditioned reward-punishment system aimed at making man so that he comes closer and closer to being a machine. The good,
successful
man is
know
the theory:
dependable, he's reliable, easily replaceable. You If you want to be an educator, or a college
you have to look worried. You cannot betray a twitch or muscle that you could possibly have an ecstatic thought inside. Your average liberal person
tical
is
genially cynical
And
to hold
any position
If there's
you have to be very serious. walks around smiling a lot and seems to
love, or
worse
yet,
if
who
raises the
hedonic
around
And
it's
like this,
when
the repressive
pendulum
is
the rat
maze
who
it's
goes around saying, "Come on, at, you know, we're here, we're
good, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure!" if you say that, you're in trouble. Orpheus was one of the early mythic members of the trade union. Middle-aged Thracian women tore him to bits in
rage.
they were wearing tennis shoes but I do know that Dionysus never got tenure and Wilhelm Reich died in jail and Crowley and on and on. It's a risky business to a
I
don't
know whether
and
prediction to
you
make when
donic society emerges, the very people today who are the most uptight and worried and serious and rational, the people playing
these roles in the future, will be the
most
professor, the psychiatrist of the future, the politician, or anyone you're going to give power to. He's got to feel better than you,
159
TIMOTHY LEARY
right?
than you.
You're not going to give power to him if he's more uptight You will be able to tell the psychiatry professor at the
And
he. just
makes you
feel
good
fact that
he even does
this will
training, learning
be because he studied for ten years and four years of it was spent how to turn himself and turn other people on.
another important aspect of psychedelic psychology is diagnosis. You have to be able to diagnose yourself. That is you have to learn to detect where your hedonic index is. It's like a
Now
thermometer. At every point your certain scale is of being uptight or turned on and actually the only point in living is to try to raise
that index, and
it's
hedonic
level of those
very important to be able to diagnose the you deal with. There are certain laws of
hedonic interaction that can bring you down if you don't understand them, but if you understand them they can bring you and
the other person
up
to
you to
series of levels
of consciousness, levels of ecstasy, or levels of pleasure, and I want to put these on the board in a rather didactic way and see
where they
lead.
7 Levels of Consciousness
Level Seven
is is
somnambulistic
sleep.
it's
Level Six
all
you
feel:
Level Five
is
game
that you're
Two
is
what we
of consciousness or
behavior.
160
One
is
is
electro-biological.
This
brought about by biochemical changes in your body. When you go to sleep there are biochemical alterations caused by fatigue and you nod out. Not only are each
of these states brought about by inner biochemicals, they can also be produced exogenously, externally, by the proper hedonic drug.
If
you want to go to sleep and you're not fatigued or you've got Level Six emotions kicking around, or your Level Five social
reward-punishment head thoughts are keeping you awake, you can take a sleeping pill and nod out.
Level Six
is
worth commenting on
for a
Emotion
rage.
To
an emergency instrument for escape or for flight which are built into the system and are rarely to be used. There's no excuse:
You're a
little
need a
stupor.
angry because the bridge is falling down and you Emotions are a form of active
thought of
this
Now
black
down among
on
"Wow,
he laying
a heavy trip."
Emotions are
far
way they are in psychoanalytic circles. Now, of course, love is not an emotion. Love
great internal energy
a feeling of
else
and love runs through all these things. Emotions are conditioned. You are taught, you learn what to fear and what to hate and what to avoid and what to approach
but emotions can be stirred up by the proper external chemicals. ... if you want to lower the hedonic index
161
TIMOTHY LEARY
and
raise the irritability
party.
Level Five
is
and punishment,
rational mentation. If
you want
probably the basic center poany animal, including man, but which is now is almost
is
fifty.
The
is
being aware directly of the energies which are hitting your eyes, your ears, and not thinking about it but just becoming one with
is
it's
at this
you where your orthodox psychology books won't tell you anything about it. Teach them rewards and punishment so that you can run a computer, or you can run a jet plane, or you can bomb, or whatever. You know, all psychology does is try to improve proit's
and
ductivity
social conditioned
behavior
messy emotional perversions that develop with bad conditioning. Psychiatry and personality psychology deals with emotions and
there are hundreds of
ries
lists
and
itself
Six,
and
want
you
it's
that
it's
very easy.
Once you
get onto
this
hedonic
where somebody else is at, because we betray our hedonic index in every gesture and tone of voice and everything we do. And it's very important for you to
index,
really very easy to diagnose
someone who
is
laying
something on you. To give you a poignant example of how to diagnose hedonic levels, let's take pro football, right? Every Sunday millions of Americans are watching pro football on television.
Now,
is
162
Jones
is
levels of
red-dogging. It's very easy, of course, to diagnose the emotion. You say, "Uh oh, what's going on here. Some
trouble.
Brown
is
is
slugging
Namath. He's
ejected
from the
field."
Emotion
make
When you
don't care about who's winning. You just want to slug him and of course usually emotional behavior interferes with your Level
game sequence and is frowned upon. At least very easy to diagnose: Namath is knocked out.
Five
Level Seven
is
Look, diagnosing Level Four is looking down left field. Uh oh! What's happening down there? Joe Namath is nearly on the field and he's smiling and he seems to have a blade of grass in his
hand. What's Joe saying down there? He's saying, "It's beautiful." He must have been shaken up badly in the last play. You can
usually tell by posture, by gesture, by arrangement of the sensory equipment whether the person is in Level Four. He's turned off to social games for the moment and he's trying to magnify, intensify, focus
on the
Westerners
this
is
well
known
that
Tantric and other well-known Oriental, Hindu, and Buddhist psychologists have developed ways of putting consciousness into the
body. They can control the voluntary ways of breathing, of heartbeat, of circulation, of direction and digestion, elimination, and so forth. They call them chakras and the important courses in the
future of psychedelic education will be courses in
these energies
how
to turn
on
from your
your autonomic
nerve plexus, and how to direct them and how to be ecstatic. I don't know much about this but Hindu and Bengali and some of
the Buddhist tantrics say that your
body
is
just filled
with
all
these
fibers, just
all
Of
163
TIMOTHY LEARY
course they're just into the orgasms which sometimes in their descriptions make the simple Playboy genital acrobatics seem rather
coarse, but we'll
all
learn
more about
this together.
is
taboo.
is Everything about social taboo. You're just not supposed to show publicly that you're grooving behind sound. You're supposed to close the door and
lie
it
one's looking
get into
Too much
considered wrong. But certainly, if you were to betray in your behavior that you were having a somatic ecstasy you're just
detail
you know, appropriate. Someone is lying down in the street they're writhing around and you come in and you say, "Hey, what's going on around here?" Cop comes. They all say the person's suffering. Somatic impulses coming out, poor thing. What's
not,
and
going on here? He's writhing in pleasure. Call the cops. Lock him up. Taboo. Sensory behavior, somatic reward or ecstasy, including sexual, has
all
when
they discover that they are not just went to Garfield High School
forth.
They discover
that
around
Most
if
far
of them don't have short haircuts, removed from our current rewards and
It's
as
we
who
is
is
ancient and
very frequent.
was a kid, that the way they would always say someone was crazy was they'd show him going around with his hand in his shirt acting like Napoleon. Anytime anyone shows behavior which seems to be archaic or be
used to be in the comic books
when
164
historical in
words
usually
you begin to
diagnose
you
You can
to be just an oddity.
well
known
Cleopatra.
Poor thing,
let's
get
him back
movement of the of has been this movement archaic, historical, proliferation Hippie and what I would call genetic behavior. When you go out to dance at the Fillmore or the Avalon, it boggles the mind to see
See the interesting thing about the psychedelic
the historic
for
and genetic types that are walking around. Especially someone who grew up as I did in the '30s and '40s when
everyone looked alike and made the same robotic motions. You go over there and you see people in Hindu costumes and Victorian
naval uniforms, gay '90s, not to mention peasant women from every culture in world history. This is just not a fad because as
people begin to turn on, begin to peel off your emotional conditioning, suspend your emotional conditioning so you're no longer afraid, you begin to disconnect the reward-punishment social systems, and that's
all
turning on
is.
Your
you
have a genetic personality, you have a racial personality. I'm quite rigorous, I would almost say scientific in my definition
of this thing. I'm talking about what Jung talked about
talked about racial unconscious.
I
when he
DNA Watson two up very carefully, but as I see the game of the DNA code, Rosemary and our friends spent a lot of time trying to unravel and decipher that Rosetta Stone in our laboratory: open air
around
after
tied the
DNA code
does
like
ours
is
a statistical
is
game
of these basic
The
first
typing, of course,
male/female. In order
165
TIMOTHY LEARY
game going you have to make sure that you get roughly 50-50 there but then within the male group there are these different karmic thoughts so you give this one bigger musto keep the
cles
and a
faster trigger
fast
machine-gun
a
little
like adrenaline
system so he
can move
and
And
this
him down
tall
but go
way
down
be the teacher.
We've got the priest and the fool and the homosexual and the plower and the peasant and so forth. The DNA code is spinning
and very often the Level Five or the Level Six had has absolutely nothing to do with what the personality in mind when they stamped you on the great cosmic Detroit Asthese things out
DNA
sembly Line and sent you here. I'm talking about a genetic
you can
DNA
and he got the muscles to go with it but unfortunately he has a Jewish mother. So she's got him off the playground at the age of four and playing violin, right? Well at the age of 10,
to anger
15,
20 or 30,
he's got
one personality.
He may
be head of the
music department at California, but somewhere underneath there, and he's mad about it but can't do anything about it except maybe
break a violin
string.
Somewhere underneath
it
it all
there
is
this
way
around.
You
have a
lot of occult,
shaman-type
Junior League Football by their parents. Now most people, of course, never know what their genetic type is. You just run in the
maze, go
left
here and go three rights, yeah and then you get a lot, oh, income tax, yeah." And, of
tem
is
to be the same.
so set up that you're teaching kids in school to be the same, You want every engineer to be the same, you
166
way
that
you because
Five,
all.
Of course,
the other
and Level
groove
at Level
you
will get
own karmic
Now an interesting thing has happened, you see, that in the last
or seven or eight years in this country more and more people have been conditioning themselves voluntarily. That's called the
five
people
alities
who
are
are beginning to
and they are scrapping their socially-conditioned perThat's what we mean by drop out. By turn on we mean sonality. decondition yourself, by drop out we mean disconnect the compulsory reward-punishment systems and do your basic seed thing. And, of course, one of the by-products of the psychedelic expression
is
could be
like a city
different castes
and
and
it's
an incredible
if any kid begins to show signs of a genetic type that isn't in the primary school manual, all the pressure of
it
out.
We
ical
and
histor-
archaic behavior which delights me and I think this is going to be one of the major occupations of the hedonic society in the
future: Finding out
who you
and
are supposed to be
and then
living
aesthetic detail.
167
TIMOTHY LEARY
I
do think
it's
strife
between and among people and groups to get this concept: the hedonic gap. The hedonic gap, the h.g., is going on all the time. It's much more important than the economic gap. It's much more
important than whether this one has got more status or power because power ain't where it's at. At every second in your life,
everyone you meet is either getting higher or bringing the other person up or bringing the other person down. And it's very important to recognize what the encounter is that you are involved in so that you will not be brought down but can bring the other
person up.
many human situations we're both at the same hedonic level. And it's let's say you and your wife. You're up here on the top and she's alongside here, all right? You and she are both asleep that's 7/7. Never knew science could be so much
You
see, in
if
and
and you're asleep that's 7/4. Now, see 5/5 is where we're both playing the husband and wife game. You're worried about the
budget.
The
first
is,
make
new
marital
diagnosis because terrible misunderstandings occur if you're turned on sensually and she's chatting about the budget, that's 4/ 5. If you're turned on very erotically, fanatically, and she's angry
because you were late coming home that's 3/6 trouble. Now with an audience of this sophistication and intelligence I need not
belabor
this. I
it
to
memory and
see
if it
works.
I
If
you and
lower
is
going to pull
not recognized, inevitably the person who is down the other person to the lower level.
very angry.
6.
You
see,
someone
is
along to reason with Well, you just can't reason with some-
You come
168
one
who
it's
very angry.
You know,
and
a rage-flight thing
ommended.
How
this
law of
inertia, of entropy,
or Freud-
bringing everyone
down? The guy with the gun can bring down the other person. The hippie is playing his flute and the cop comes along. You know
the cop
the law,
Five,
is
a Level Five
he's got
and eventually the hippie is going to be down conditioned rewards and punishment.
and
is
to Level
Children
all
going on in
first
sexy, erotic, somatic, genetic-type kids. And they just want to do the whole thing and play out their genetic roles and this and that
and running and nursing and playing doctor. And you've got a school teacher who is paid by society to lay the Level Five trip on them.
Level
One
is
electro-biochemical.
It is
well
known
is
that there
just
when
the
human nervous
system
taken
over by a wave-like almost electrical type phenomenon, an epileptic seizure, for example, or an electric shock, which is given in
therapy, or reports from visionaries and certain explorers who report that at high moments of ecstasy everything is just a vibration. There's
no more
light or pure plus and minus charge. What is the school teacher's hedonic profile? In the future, there's going to be one reason for any scientific product and that
is
that will
make people
feel
When you
go to a psychiatrist
169
TIMOTHY LEARY
and what's your hedonic level? Oh, your sensory level is way down, tsk, tsk. We have a little drug for you to take. And well, your genetic level too. We have no action there but we have a
it
in
much
better
And you
will be able to
profile
You
levels.
one of these
At Level Four, the sensory level, if you're going to know yourself and know who you are you have to know that each person has certain sensory equipment which are over-developed
even though in the classroom turned on in a sensory way and wiggling and the teacher comes in and the teacher, of course, has the con-
aren't, so that
all
the punishment, including the Level Six anger thing. There's that amount of gap. But then among the kids themselves when
they go out on the playground and play you find a different kind of hedonic gap which is much less ominous because it leads to
interlevel
harmony and
that
is
move around
body and the other one likes to groove behind his eyes or ears If you get a girl who grooves behind touch and a boy who grooves behind looking, there's a hedonic gap there. She'll
his
or touch.
he doesn't
he's very agile in his kinesthetic equipment but touch or anything." Or she'll say, "Well, you may be a dancer but you ain't no lover," to paraphrase the Beatles' description of the Maharishi.
say, "Well,
maybe
like to
Now, how do you lower the hedonic gap? This is a crucial issue and until we learn how to understand and to lessen the hedonic
gap that comes between people there's just going to be nothing but bloodshed and war and uptight trips.
it's
Number Two:
If
is
recog-
see
in yourself
and others
170
Now,
priate
skill.
You have
if
to
know what
the appro-
reward
is. If
into a rage,
you stop being poverty funds to the ghetto, okay? It just doesn't work. You can't reason with someone who is in a rage or in a terror. You have to pick out the exact, specific reward that will reduce the fear.
say, well,
with them.
You
mad
You can
To
if
give
this thing
works
at all levels,
someone
higher,
you have
somebody up or down
To show
you how
cific,
situation
now between
all
the black
reward would work, take the community and the police and
there's a
Now,
tremendous amount
are afraid
of fear in
because they think they're living in a colonial situation where the white policemen come in and take their rights away. The white
middle class or lower middle class guy that's finally got his little house, he's worried because the blacks are going to take it, there's
going to be a riot and he's
are in the
all
uptight.
And
most
difficult position
of
all.
they have to patrol a conquered territory. You couldn't have chosen a better situation to lower the whole hedonic level.
The
solution to this
is
You have to reward everybody. You cannot reward the blacks because then the whites will get more upset.
psychedelic psychology.
Precisely, the
all
out of the black ghetto and put them in the white neighborhoods so that every white neighborhood has two cops at every corner. Then have the black police take care of their blocks. Then the
white people aren't
mad and
them
171
TIMOTHY LEARY
and you know, that's great. The uptight white neighborhood is no longer uptight because they got a ring of police and the black
community can do
its
all
so intelligent that
with
belabor the techniques of recognizing the hedonic gap and dealing it in correct ways. The wrong reward is no more than useless.
Another Truth about the hedonic gap is that you can't jump levels, I don't think. Or maybe you can jump very quickly but if
very angry at Level Six, the reward's got to be at that level or if you bring him up to a level higher it's going to be
the person
is
really
unusual and then you can get him to turn on more. But
is
if
you Four massage or bring them a Level Four flower or you'll get hit over the head. This thing seems to operate in a very precise way you just move from level to level and this, as I said, will be the main occupation of the hedonic society of the future the
that
someone
can't give
them a Level
ranging of the hedonic index, the harmonizing of hedonic gaps. It's now we return, of course, to the differences between people,
to the unitarian, liberal socialist left-wing person,
is
when everyone
the
same we're
all
notion of differences seem upsetting but actually, to the psychedelic psychologist, all these differences that exist among us be-
come
You teach
me, you teach Rosemary, your hedonic discoveries and we'll share ours with you and the differences instead of leading to conflict
172
TO TUNE
pleasure.
IN.
the study of
relation-
and the
ship of the pleasurable or unconditioned state to the conditioned. Now, we define pleasure as the nervous system freed from the
reward and punishment and associations of social conditioning. I spoke about the hedonic age which is now well upon us and blosour future: the age of play and display, in which the only point of human life will be the finding of what we're here
soming
to seek
in
I want to repeat a warning which I have made in the past: There's no dogmatic stuff being laid out, just our trip, Rosemary's
and mine, and our brothers' and sisters'. We're not explaining, we're exploring, sharing some of the notions that have occurred
to us.
I
really
have to underscore
this
about something as elusive as the sexual relationship and particularly speaking from the male point of view. Not to mention the
fact that I'm a Libra,
The
fact to
and you know how Librans like balance. remember about the psychedelic marriage, is this:
Psychedelic drugs push you through the hedonic barrier, they turn
on your body. Psychedelic drugs turn on somatic and sensory and genetic and vibratory energy.
If
173
TIMOTHY LEARY
psychedelic drugs (such as
useful to
will find
it
work out
is
no hedonic compulsion here. You don't have to take psychedelic drugs. As a matter of fact, I would speculate that
there
Now
perhaps there are fifty percent of the people on this planet who are not karmically designed for the psychedelic yoga, the yoga of
turning on the energies in your body and then learning hook these up in helical union.
Psychedelic drugs
Erotic? Eros, Love.
how
to
do turn on
erotic energy.
What do To
mean by
They turn on
ment
us Eros means
God. God, Love, Eros. God, Love, Eros. Religion means Eros, Love.
Psychedelic drugs are aphrodisiacs.
When
I first
made
this
ob-
maga-
many
who had
said, "I
written a
book on
there
and she
have wit-
nessed over
was not one erotic experience in my presence!" Not to mention psychiatrists who had given LSD in mental hospitals. They had absolute proof that LSD was no an erotic
instrument.
used the term aphrodisiac in the Playboy interview to refer to Aphrodite, goddess of Love. The effect of psychedelic drugs is to
I
turn on corporeal energies, not necessarily and automatically for good, because if there's anything that is ominous and destructive,
and
really fearful in
human
existence,
it's
energies which are distorted, twisted, misunderstood. Most of our confusion and aggression, of course, comes from those energies.
I
simply point out that psychedelic drugs do pose the problem of it on or turning it off illustrating the problem
spiritual sex.
174
and
spiritual athletics.
"Do you
it
which psychedelic drugs kind, sports which involve flow, immediacy, sensory intensification, and harmony with energies greater than yourself, sure." Take the United States Ski Team. Turn them
to play, but there are certain sports
will help.
want
The non-aggression
And probably
uh-uh.
is
the
Tennis
Team would
benefit.
absolutely
whether for good or for bad or for construction or destrucfor God or the Devil. I remember reading about the case of
who had
a nightclub, and
it
been unwittingly dosed with LSD in took ten deputy sheriffs to hold her down.
all
Well,
the
mean,
human body
has
and
racial history
and you spin down through your DNA ladders of genetic and and reincarnate in all these different forms, and
if
perhaps,
moment
of highest
illu-
mination where everything becomes a magnetized dance of vibrations and then what? And then you come down, right?
. . .
Consider
this situation in
think of
a cardiogram.
You can
plug yourself in and get a reading of what's happening. You're getting hedonic tape all the time, and you're fluctuating
up and down.
average beer-drinking American: Mainly sleep, social conditioning, and sullen senses. He does have moments of the sensory hit: That is,
Let's look at the daily
hedonic fluctuation
level of the
175
TIMOTHY LEARY
shaving lotion in the morning. And he enjoys getting a haircut because he digs the massage on his head. Now, let's take someone who's been living this way but then
he
takes LSD.
barrier.
We
And
have here a case of breaking through the hedonic the question is, what sort of rhythm do you need to
keep going? How do you enter and control the energies? Because once you have broken through the hedonic barrier, once you are aware of the fact that there is more besides reward and punish-
ment and sleep and dull pain, then the question is, how much sensory, and which sensory energies, and how much somatic, and which somatic energies. Then the real excitement and challenge of psychedelic psychology or the spiritual life begins to unfold. Which yogas, which
techniques
?
whom?
ligion?
Yes, above
When and how and basically with whom? With all, with whom? Who belongs to the new relow
When
hedonic
then you get religions of pain and suffering. When a whole nation that's caught at the levels of reward you've got
irritation
it
and sleep, you've got to have a Therefore most of our Western up.
down
a virtue.
They glorify most Judeo-Christian systems, illness becomes Certainly the worried frown will get you ahead faster
trip.
In
We
watch
begin to worship
illness.
don't
on
the
the road
plane.
at Life magazine on amazing the number of ads for patent medicines and aspirins and three-way potions and two-way lotions you see and none of these drugs aim to make you feel good, just ease the
It's
little.
pain a
We've had some revelatory experiences recently about the illness trip that the world has been on this year. I think that if you
176
You know,
dent.
there's the
Hong Kong
flu.
and they said, "Yeah, man, let Nixon have it. He's suffermore than the other two candidates." If you're that sick, you don't want a smiling face around, do you? When the Nixon ading
come down
White
flu.
is
Hepatitis
is
hanging around,
feeling
down. You
know,
"Yeah,
there's
let
no zest, and J. Edgar wants another forty-year term. him have it. Sure. Pass the three-way aspirin, Pat."
You know, if you study the political bulletins you'll realize that too many of the leaders of the world are operating out of hospital beds. Every now and then, they get Mao Tse-tung on his feet to
prove he's
alive. It
in
Mr. Nixon's
had a
heart attack and he ran the country better than ever from that
plush hospital in Colorado. FDR and JFK in wheelchairs! What's happening?! I think it's clear that civilized man, technological
is
just
is
not
with the rhythms of the body, and there's more smog and and Hong Kong flu. So, there'll be an intensification
religions.
is
of the
down
And
then,
you
get
God
the geriatric.
And
Christiaan Barnard
his prophet.
The down
Genesis,
book of
of the
Garden
That Genesis
is
just
an
would
whole theory. As
Aquarian Age we've got to rewrite that Genesis: Eve gives Adam the apple. And he bites it. "Fantastic. Say! Where'd you get that?"
into the
we dance
it!"
Adam
says.
177
TIMOTHY LEARY
She
tries
it.
"Yeah, incredible!"
"Hey, give
some
to the snake!"
"Yeah, right!"
trees, and a hundred pear trees and all sorts of w^onderful vegetables grov^ing! Garden of Eden. Really. In the Hedonic Age the religious issue simply becomes a matter
Whose product is going to get you higher, faster, longer, cheaper? Now, v^e have this Meher Baba guru telling you about his ocean of bliss. And the Dick Alpert guru has the endless orgasm. And you get all these different cats and sects
of hedonic competition.
offering their brand of ecstasy. Right on!
I
v^as in
my
pilgrimages talking to a
that threw
in
Zen
master
who was
me
little
Tibetan Buddhism?"
said, "Yes."
"You've written a book about the psychology of the Tibetan Book of the Dead."
I
said,
"Yes."
He
is
said, "Well,
we
in
And I said, "Well, yeah, right on. Take me on your trip!" He said, "The Tibetans call their Void a White Light." And I said, "Yeah." "Well, we talk about Pure Void. How can the Void be white?" I said, "Well, professor, you've taught me a great deal." The other night, we saw some advertising of gurus at the door.
The were handing out
anyone
erature!
else that
in favor of competition,
and
welcome
the
Meher
Baba-ites or
wants to come up here and rap or pass out litRemember, I'm not involved, Rosemary and our brothers
and
not involved in the guru game at all. It's just not our karma to run that avatar-supreme master-perfect illuminated
sisters are
state-guru number.
178
fifty
per-
we
There's no competition here between any of these paths because are all going to get to the same place, and we know that there
and
we'll
Oddly enough, we can go exactly opposite probably end up there at the same time if we
if
we
DNA ticker-tape
bliss
you want
to
go
there,
There
things
is
an
do go in rhythms. Like anything else in life there are ups and downs, and the particular timing of your rhythm, the height, the depths, and so forth, that's the name of the game.
There are some people
who
which
there
is
and stay
it's
all
the time.
don't
know
if
this
is
certainly worth finding out. I do feel, though, that we should be as precise and as conscious as we can about which particular path
or yoga each of us should take. We should be very gentle with each other too, recognizing that
we
different directions at
and we're going in the same time, and we must not get in each
levels,
all
and
other's way.
think
we
we
deserve.
We
all
get the
God we
deserve.
God. That's a conditioned reward-punishment deity the 39 articles of the Church of England. God, jealous and wrathful all the
time.
I
we can
two
have suggested that there are two general directions. Perhaps take only one of these in a lifetime. Perhaps there's a
rhythm, perhaps
we can
try
different directions,
and one
is
to turn
is
The other
Now the
we
179
TIMOTHY LEARY
we
recognize that there
is
the mind,
is
and we recognize that there the body, and the dehcious chakras,
ail
but you've got to center all these and turn them off, turn them off, turn them off, until you're getting higher and purer and you
just stay
up in the electric flash-void-nirvana vibration state. Turn on the body or turn off the body. That's the choice.
The
turn-off method,
all
attachments to
And, of course, we're talking about two different manifestations of God, God as a male or God as a female, or God as the
union of the two.
It's
is
never
but you're just not designed to be neurologically married. Perhaps your yoga is to take psychedelic drugs only once just to see
where you're at. There may be good reasons to do this division of men. The DNA knows what it's doing. The DNA deals out different sex
cards in other species.
Not
all
DNA
code. In
some
and troops of ungulates and primates, there's only one male that does it. There's a tremendous range here. It's not
tribes
just either/or.
We
acceleration
of your spiritual
Now, if I suggest that maybe half of the people in this audience karmically are not designed to make a full-time yoga of psychedelic drugs or of spiritual marriage, I'm not putting you down,
nor do
to say
I want you to put us down. As a matter of fact, if I had which was the higher evolutionary form, I would say,
how
body and
get into
180
a helical principle
now
is
many of you in this audience should up follow someone like Meher Baba, or Maharishi, or should go
later. It's
It
back to a more orthodox form of Protestantism or Christianity. may well be that we're predestined to favor one of these yogas
or another.
Everyone these days puts down Calvin and those early Swiss hard-headed Protestants. They talked about predestination and
they laid
it
some people
are going to
make it to Not in
pessimism. But I consider Calvinism to be static Hinduism for those of you who are theologically inclined. It's erroneously
no question of
We're
all
How we
do
it
may
no one-upmanship
central, solar soul
here.
bank where
it
know
the
harmonic sound
bodies,
no
DNA code, just that bliss hum. The next time we meet
we spend
blissful eternities,
there, after
some of you may have to play the which will serve you priest of LSD
around,
I'll
right!
And maybe
Baba,
next time
silent for
get to be
naked
thirty years, with a constant orgasmic grin on my face. I want to be some kind of celestial psychologist. I will help each and every one of you to understand a little bit more about your
exponent of Transcendental Meditation Intelligence His the '60s. Spiritual Regeneration movement aimed to save the during world through meditation.
John Calvin: French thelogian v^ho systematized Protestantism, struggled with the "Libertines," and virtually ran Geneva through the College of Pastors
Discipline.
181
TIMOTHY LEARY
Spiritual diagnostic profile, or
check
it
it
know what the DNA code has I know at Millbrook really there were lots of people who came there who just weren't supposed to be on our turn-on-the-body, tantric-mating trip. And it was unsettling for them. Because we would be sitting around doYou
see, it's a
drag
if
we
don't
It
becomes a drag.
would be
door.
is
there, restless
and
rebellious
and
passing out
The astrophysics are well known to any journeyman Hindu Holy man. Meher Baba knew it and the Maharishi knew it: If you can get a hundred million people saying "OM" at the same time, or chanting Hare
strategy
quite valid.
Krishna if they get enough people in that laser beam it really would destroy ignorance. The psycho-physics is obvious to many Eastern and Western thinkers. The tactics of the do-it-yourself trip are: select that basic vibration. If you're going to do it yourself, (that is, if you're not going
to take a body-Tantra-mating-spiritual marriage trip) just stay
down and
if
you
really
want
to
make
a lifelong
it
yourself, then
you've got to start detaching from all external vibrations. Because it is obvious from ecclesiastical history that religion has to be
pure.
If
keep listening to
up energy, you you gotta keep listening to Meher Baba, him, and don't do anything else but just
if
starts stirring
you do get
distracted
down here,
is
not
electrons
and neutrons
is
stirring
for.
You
relation-
dangerous power.
182
about,
In folding. Inclusive.
You and
her.
DNA
ers,
starts to trip excludes the outer. When the erotic energy build up, as it often does around one of these great avatar preach-
or god-like presences, if it's used externally, sprayed around You get a system where politically, you get the Catholic Church.
men go around
in robes putting
you you and putting down sensuality and sexuality, and he's got a watch out. political-social organization he wants you to join, hey, As a matter of fact, those of us who are in the radical Tantric
see a
camp sometimes
what
aren't they
think that
all politics is
homosexual.
home with
her?
Or home, doing
. .
their
Om?
Remember the DNA As soon as erotic energy starts flowing double helical structure. Remember the atomic structure. Remem.
primer on
a very interesting spiritual trip. Just read a simple atomic energy and the structure of the atom. You'll
It's
how
this
to
make
love.
As
understand
And
with an proton then you have the electron spinin the center,
ning out around it. She comes in many forms, the Godly proton. She has different charges. With a charge of one proton, you have
hydrogen, and there's one electron up there, two, four, six, eight, up into the hundreds of electrons, but you always have that balance of charged electrons up there and the proton down home
center. That's
what we mean,
at Level
no problem
As a matter of
we, and the next time around we'll get decharged and
we won't
183
TIMOTHY LEARY
have to worry about the messy complexities of the plus-minus, yin-yang marriage. It gets pretty complicated, because in the neurological marriage, the spiritual marriage, the psychedelic marriage, you're turning on more energies, more possibilities of receiving and sending energy, and you're multiplying the possibilities
of hedonic confusion.
When I say that all power politics is a faggot hassle, I'm simply asking, why aren't they home with Her? Or in church with Him?
Eros spelt backwards
is
sore.
think
it's
no accident that
religions
which give you the spectacle of pale-faced men in robes putting down women and sexuality tend to produce the best policemen and the hottest wars.
I
do not think
an ashram
that's
an accident.
remember
visiting
in Rishikesh,
lot of
men
hooked up
ananda
As
leading this
ashram were
I
really radiant
could see how, perhaps, at another time, I could have, well, just sat down and grooved on that Rishikesh
strong enough that
was
at a meditation,
and
my
honor,
many
down
a valedictorian number.
It
Each one
It
was
incredible.
was all a put-down of women. And how her body is full of mucus and menstrual fluid and covered with hair, not to mention alimony, and henpecking, charge accounts, and women's liberation.
When
worked
was
once
any former patients, you've got my apologies. I was at the Esalon baths about a month ago with Rosemary, and there
of you are
my
was
a lady in the bath, and she popped up out of the hot tub and she said, "I'm a former patient of yours." I said, "Do you forgive
in the tub for
184
said, "Yes.")
When
was a psycholand
all
was
the
on
identity crisis.
having homosexual panics. I consider most organized religion to be adolescent identity crises, if not a full-
who were
blown homosexual
panic.
You
messy
this
time
this
thing going
down
released
from that
cellular addiction
I would say maybe fifty percent of would be married out doing Tantra, if it weren't for social conditioning, which did not take their karma into account. So they become red-faced alcoholics. But I would
much
between these
two approaches. Let there neither be envy nor gratuitous putting down of matters which are determined by electrical charges. Next, I want to read from one of our bibles. This bible is titled
"Tantra
sensual
art." Its
philosophy
divine
is
is
physics.
It's
an incredibly smooth,
book
to touch
life
and handle.
from Brahma to a blade of
grass,
"In search of
everything in the
world
the creation of
get this
Maya
book
is
The author extends his sincere gratitude to those who remain unnamed who initiated him into Tantra art, the exploration of which has been for him an engrossing spiritual adventure for over
a decade. His thanks go as well to several professors
who
aided
Erik Eriksen: This U.S. psychoanalyst born in Frankfurt, trained with Sigmund and Anna Freud, and specialized in the study of social and cultural
modification on children, postulating that there are 8 stages of velopment. He coined the term "identity crisis."
human
de-
185
TIMOTHY LEARY
materially in the
making of
this
book.
And
he gives a
final, in-
dispensable expression of gratitude to Sudha, who first instilled and then furthered a passion for a path so ancient and so new.
And
the right
with her, the author remembers something more, for which word can never be found.
the inscription of the
I
And
book
I
is:
"To Her."
anytime someone would
Before
understood what
it
now
physical matters,
used to disturb
me
come
if they came single. I'd say, where's Here's a restless electron spinning "Man, your proton?"
to talk to us at Millbrook,
through space looking for God. Whish! Whisht Whishl You know chemical heat that's burning, frictional explosion from colliding electrons, masculine smoke and noise. We had a lot of electrons
spinning though Millbrook, and through Harvard. And we'd say, "Well now, man, where's your better half?" I mean, in a way,
and where is she? I realize now that I was partly in error then. The two questions to ask a single person who approaches you
about a
spiritual matter are either,
is
"Where
is
she?" or
"Who
is
his
sound?
What
is
is
of consciousness.
To work
out harmonies
of increasing energy intensities the union of the twenty-one yogas that tell you how it's going. The space-time coordinates are
important: Where? And in what position? Posture is an important and obvious step in reducing the hedonic gap. Practical rule number one in the neurological marriage
electron,
is
as
one part of
you're always in coiling rhythm with the other half. You keep asking the questions: Where am I going
now and
why?
186
Now, any
rather
is
the bind.
The
fear of losing
my
Or
my
tormenter.
Or
losing
my
victim.
The
fear of
order to pursue a spiritual marriage, obviously you have to center things at Level Six. That's the base pedal of the organ. There has to be severe trusting
losing, simply at that
level. In
emotional
harmony down
there.
devotional postures are involved here: to worship your avatar all of you devotees face him shoulder to shoulder. The
Islamic people have a beautiful thing going
Two
Mecca
five
times a day.
You
sense the
everyone's shoulder to shoulder looking at Rishikesh, everyone's kneeling shoulder to shoulder facing Rome. That's your power
posture.
The posture for the neurological marriage is, of course. You're facing Him, You're facing Her. Where does it take place? Are you all facing forward in a temple?
Are you
all
facing
all
facing
going?
Or are you at home facing each other? The Level Five marriage is advertised in computer
fill
dating.
You
out the dating questionnaire and the computer tells you which social rewards and aversions you and she share. That's the typical marriage. We both like to bowl, and we're both Democrats, neither of us like to swim,
taxes. If
you wish
tioned marriage, you have to start arranging your surroundings in such a way that you're going to get to a higher merger. The
temple of
The
the home, in the neurological marriage. where place you worship is not some building out there
God becomes
187
TIMOTHY LEARY
where you go with lots of other people. It has to be the inner shrine. The rituals are simply the practical methods you use to get to your goal. That's why there is an inevitable merging of external
games.
I
remember meeting
couple on your hands, if you can think of a couple that you know, and you've never seen them separately. You never see him
without her. Every time you see them, it's that way. Rosemary and I know about fifty such couples. You see, after a while, these
fused emanations and vibrations.
mind
too, so that
The helical thing cops your their names apart. You never never you say
it's
always Joe and Joan. They're just one person. When you're in the presence of such a couple (if you're alert to these hedonic matters) it's a powerful experience. You are
think of saying Joe,
dealing with a double-merged entity which
biochemistry tells us is more than the addition of its contingent parts. This couple in India lived in a little house. He was a Hindu, graduate of Oxall
ford.
was
woman, and
They
made
in the village.
You would
them wandering together on the hilltop at sunset. Occasionally you would see them walking into town. After a while you realized that they woke in the morning and that they brushed each other's hair. They dressed each other. The whole rhythm of life everythat ever saw that was there was shared nothing they thing what wasn't a shrine object designed to enhance the sacredness of
D. H. Lawrence: This
ers,
influential
author of
Women
in
and Lady Chatterly's Lover explored the untouched sexual emotion and was prosecuted for obscenity.
human
188
barrier.
At the Level Four union, we have broken through the hedonic Mating and marriages are more exciting at Levels Three
and Four. That means we start smoking a lot of grass together. Now, you remember what happens in a Level Five, Level Six
home. Husband and wife wake up in the morning, he showers, puts on his clothes, quick breakfast, drives to work. Every socially
conditioned
game
takes
him
farther
and
farther
from the
social
games
she's playing.
They
are in
now
She's
these
clients.
Their consciousness
is
now
and
Once
els,
new games
hedonic diagnostic index is different from hers, even at the sensory level. You both made the A+ in Sensory Energy 1-A and Marijuana 1-B but still, her thing is sound and music, where
you are more into taste and touch. So she's always turning you on to new scents, and you've been very agile kinesthetically with
yoga, but she can sure dance, see, so that an interesting exchange of sensual pleasure begins to unfold. You exchange yogas and teach each other how to control these various energies. The dance
becomes more complicated. You see, if the husband doesn't go off to work, but stays home all day, or they both go off together, they begin to share through the day the same game consciousness and the same sensory repertoire. They are more likely to smell
alike. They are more and more
eating the
repertoire
is
unified, so that pretty soon telepathy begins to develop, not just because the Level Five social conditioning rat
is
shared. That's part of it, because they're both on the same board. But at the straight chemical neurological level, their game sense organs are being turned on by the same stimuli.
maze
189
TIMOTHY LEARY
I
do
tra of
is
lines of that
naked picture of John Lennon and his Shakti published on the album cover and in Rolling Stone magazine. That's a historic religious shot because
it
compares favorably
his Shakti.
yab-
yum
position of
Buddha and
Compare
that beautiful
Adam
up The Level Three sexual communication is of great interest. After a w^hile, you begin to breathe more together. I'm sure that most of you during an LSD session have had the feeling of your
to heaven
in
body merging with a mate, so that it's just one heart, one pulse, one rate of circulation, one rhythm of breathing, one heart, and then the fibers begin to infiltrate and grov^ into one body. Merging
at the
is
somatic
level,
a lively discipline which will involve in the ecstatic university of the future.
many
university courses
easier to
Because
down
pretty
to
it,
we
We have the same sense organs, the eyes, the ears, the kinesthetics,
the smell and touch,
same organs that can merge and get in rhythm or out of rhythm and we can start charting these rhythms, because we have the same equipment.
the
we have
much
But when you get to the Level Two marriage it becomes very tricky, because Level Two is the level of your genetic or racial or mythic personality, and here, you get an entirely different
going. There's a
ball-
and you and your game Shakti find out that although you share the same conditioned reflexes, and you're wearing the same clothes, and all your sense
set of conditions,
new
organs and body parts are hooked up, and you're able to move into and out of all sorts of sensory rhythms perfectly and you're the hippest couple of the block suddenly you get too far into
190
mythic types.
It
complex
need a new typology, a whole new language to understand what's happening. We happen to prefer the astrological language
for diagnosing essence,
We
and mythic
types.
Your understanding of who you are system at Level Two would be helped if you understood the pantheon of gods from Hinduism and from Greek Mythology because you are playing a part of Venus or Mars and now here comes Vulcan, and there goes Hermes. And of course when you do merge, you get four arms instead of two and she becomes Kali and you shrink down to a skinny Sova. The more you know about these old
^Jungian, tarot, etc.
relatives
and
Or
you are in the god game now. The more you know about these tarot cards
to chart your
Now,
cial
fortunately or unfortunately, we have many of these racards playing around, and many of you who have had deep
psychedelic experiences
carnations.
It's all
know
that
rein-
there in the
DNA
Some
of our ancestor
humans
musculature.
and unfriendly then you even have the possibility no, I'd say even the certainty that many of your ancestral, racial karmic
are pretty untidy fellows with long jaws
And
prehuman
that
is,
this in-
and
lions
and
bulls
and so
forth.
Please,
the rules of the game: You're God and I'm God. no complaints about the pay. It's a full-time job. It does require that you start right from the beginning. You've got to be your own Moses, and you've got to decide about your own Ten Commandments. You've got to be Galileo, and discover the laws of gravity and magnetism.
You know
191
NOTHING Fm GOING TO
designed to urge
There are no
revealed.
VOICE
so
(from Audience):
it's
Why
Not?
Well, because
a tricky business.
We
are
all
so different, with
many
different possibilities.
We
speeds in so
many
different directions.
may work
We're
suggest
ninety.
in talking about pleasure or the or the psychedelic experience. There's always spiritual experience the danger that for anyone that might be freed a little bit by what
all
they hear here, there'll be someone who'll be hung up. I sometimes wonder about the calculus or economics of hedonism. Certainly
millions,
millions
of
people
have
been
illuminated,
and turned on to a more joyous way of life in the last few years by what we have been doing. But there's also the possibility that for each person we have turned on and liberated,
liberated,
there's another
is
LSD
good or
really
bad?"
192
And
two
theories.
The
first is
that
when
it
virtues that
all
lifetimes to accumulate.
And
those
many
you did
fasted
and passed out leaflets at the door you may be just blowing it all on one big 1968-69 LSD splurge. Cosmic drunken sailors. And we may all have to go back many lifetimes and pick
years.
possibility that extraterrestrial intelli-
God
saw
the mechanical
horror that was going on down here, and seeded the planet with this sacramental elixir which is the one and only way of getting
out,
is
an absolute,
sinful waste.
The
in
either at
between or both.
Of
McLuhan, we just can't do that Gutenberg The thing. exposition is helical. This is an interesting audience to talk with. It's certainly not an audience to talk down to. Sometimes I see air and the audience is levitating and smiling at me
the age of Marshall
We
who
are
still
linear-Gutenberg
called
in the
One is High Priest and the other is called Politics of Ecstasy. And later, lighter book. Politics of Ecstasy, much of the material
habit, I've written
two books
recently.
Age
in
books
like
Medium
is
the Massage.
Like Leary,
McLuhan
193
TIMOTHY LEARY
that we've been discussing here
subject-predicate sentences.
is
laid
down
in paragraphs
and
The
is
How To
How
to live a turned-on
uptight planet.
Before getting into this area, I'd like to review very briefly what
we've been talking about in the last two meetings. The first evening was devoted to a discussion of psychedelic
psychology. Pleasure. How to produce pleasure. The relationship between the unconditioned pleasurable state and the conditioned
Reward-punishment, social conditioning, was cited ominous trap, the Pavlovian prison from which we must
state.
as the
all es-
cape.
We
ness
each of which can be brought about by specific and precise use of the proper drug. We talked about the need to crack the
hedonic barrier with chemical propellants. We discussed the hedonic gap which exists at all times in every encounter be-
either getting
something that
what turning on and turning off is all about. Man has now discovered that he does not have to live just with socially conditioned time. Level Five time, five o'clock, three o'clock, 17th of
January, First inning. Fourth quarter, 1968, 1969. These are the little identification numbers tacked over the particular maze of
alleyways that
we
select
during
little
to
Turning on or turning off is entirely a matter of slowing down or speeding up time. As soon as you leave clock time, as soon as you leave the social conditioned level, you start playing around
with time.
194
ways of expanding consciousness. One of these is drugs. Another is Tantra, the sexual union of male and female. I emphasized these as maha-yogas. The more energy you release (unon, 21
you're just going to expand in a gaseous acid cloud) the you need the yogic methods for harnessing and aesthetically
less
more man-
Another
ogy.
I
trip
we took
in the first
two
lectures:
pushed
astrolis
many
the
in
oldest
Most
static as
mechanical
reward-punishment society. But the religions and philosophies and psychologies of tomorrow just have to be temporal. They
have to account for the fact that
we
erating experience and we are constantly changing. None of our current psychologies do this. Freudian psychology, conditioning
psychology, even Jungian psychology, doesn't allow for the inevitability of things changing rapidly. The highest and best philosophy, the basic doctrine that brings us right
the Taoist philosophy.
written.
down
to earth
is
The Tao
te
Ching
is
is
the greatest
book ever
some way of diagnosing yourself and diagnosing your situation, finding out who you are in terms of a system of rhythmic changes. I don't care what sequential system you use, but I think you'd be wiser and better
I'm really pushing here
What
The Taoist
this. There are many people who get up in the morning and, instead of consulting a calendar, they throw the / Ching. They get to the office and then when they're going to buy or sell,
doing
Ching.
Ching is very much like a simple six-line ticker tape from the cosmic marketing center on some celestial Wall Street. The I
The
195
TIMOTHY LEARY
Ching summarizes for you
in six lines the current status of the
cosmic marketplace. It's the celestial Dow-Jones report utilities are up and commodities down. The minute-to-minute six-bar
reading of the
I
Ching
oil
is
The
little
old lady in
Andromeda
one share of
and
it
One
time at Millbrook
we
constructed an
Ching clock.
We
lined up the I Ching yin-yang lines, in such a way that you got a continual belt in which any trigram or any hexagram was equally probable. We attached it to a polygraph, so that every four sec-
onds another
look at the
line
into the
room, and
it
in-
what time
was, you
Ching clock and get a reading. I want to repeat my disclaimer about the astrological revelations that were made last week. I divided the astrological chart
into those sun signs
likely to
psychedelic marriage
the next day
want you
to
know
noon
got seven calls from Pisceans, and eleven calls from Aquarians who had stayed up all night, and wanted us to
that there
we
know
was
we were
delighted
name
week caused any you to think about who you are and why you turn on or turn off, and who is your God, and who is your mate, and do you want a mate anyway, do you really in a genetic sense, a radical
religion. If the astrological statements last
own
of
want
to get married
if
my
specula-
tions stirred
rest
my
case.
is
The
it's
third
Anyone who
gets
up on a
plat-
form and
or reckless.
Why
about the male-female relationship is either nuts am I doing it? Because I think that there's too
196
much emphasis
and
lining
Now,
that's cool.
up followers are on autoerotic kicks. This time around perhaps half of us are detrip.
On the
wife.
game
is
is,
A man and woman mate and begin having higher and higher
As they
start
hooking up more and more Level Five games and hooking up more body functions together and sharing more and more space and time together, tremendous energy starts
experiences.
It's
It's
new
religion.
A new
hand out
at
leaflets
more of
pass
My aim here
on that
and
half of
you examine your genetic that the way for you to find God is in the
as
Drop Out. How to live the detached life which allows you to grow higher and higher. There are two ways to do this. If you're serious about the spiritual path,
Next we
talk
about
How To
figure out
it
by yourself.
is
You have
to
become God
are
you
you going to orient which centers around the febefore these terms can
male.
make
197
TIMOTHY LEARY
The situation starts like this: The basic unit is positive-negative from the time it hooks up into a dance. That's molecular structure. That's v^hy and how^ we're all here. The minus charges are male and the plus are w^omen (do it any w^ay you w^ant). It's all
sw^irling
around
like a
aim of the
cloud or a junior high school poem. The is to get each of these en-
The
social
energy going along social channels. negative particles there are electrons. You have unattached electrons and protons milling around the neighborhood. From our rudimentary
get
all
of this
knowledge of atomic physics we see that there are two possibilities, the laser model or the atomic model. Let's assume that some
Now, when you turn on, more energy starts developing. It can occur at any level. Some way, someone gets the energy going and pretty soon he develops his own beat. The charismatic leader. The other choice is to hook up in a bi-polar relationship. But both electron and proton must be equally charged. The atomic or
of these individuals start turning on.
the bi-polar relationship,
which
is
is
female, plus-minus
model
embracing.
And
as
it
embraces
it
be-
comes
expansive. That's a rhythm that you see in all nature. As an atom or a planetary system or a galaxy hurtles through space, it makes a helical form, the moon going around the around
less
the earth, the earth going around the sun, the sun
center,
around
galactic
and the electron going around the proton. Because of the attracting charges, plus and minus, you get an embracing
hook-up. These are essentially the two choices for handling increased energy.
There's no problem
conditioning.
if
you want
You just go along the maze, turning left and right and up and down, and that's cool. It's over very quickly that way. The best addictive narcotic around is just to go to school and get
a job. But
if
you want
if
you want
to
198
proton. Notice that the Tantric units tend to cluster into tribal
structures.
life, and the aesthetics of your drop out is which of these choices you make. Much of the dependent upon confusion and much of the friction and much of the anguish and
The
style
of your
much
simply that people get into the wrong energy field, wrong for them. They think that the way to do it is Tantric when their own
karmic direction
in
is
probably
laser.
There
it
your
life
to
do
may
way and
later in a bi-polar
way. And
there's
no
stasis here.
In the electron-proton Tantric trip the proton becomes God. Where's your proton? Endless complications and expansions. As the male and female begin to orient more and more towards each
other, at Level Five, he doesn't
go to the
office
Women Voters. They're together all the time so that even the systems of social rewards and punishments become shared. At Level Four and Level Three, sensory and body
go to the League of
contacts
released.
More
become deepened and more complex. More energy is energy begins to develop. Higher charges. The pro-
one or many charges. Lonely neutrons are attracted, adding both mass and beauty to the atomic structure. The electron is the free male hurtling out of orbit. The effect
ton, as a result, can have
of the unattached electron on the positive-negative atom, of course, can be destructive. Electrons
it
on the
stage?
TIMOTHY LEARY
But when the female principle, the proton, merges, nuclear can develop. (Pause. Beautiful young woman walks on
stage)
fission
What
GIRL:
Leo. (The
woman
in
begins to disrobe
on
stage.)
. .
LEARY:
we have found
that Leo
women
operating on the
charge
is
now
naked, em-
electron?
like?
LEARY:
Right.
LEARY: Which
choice?
electron
would
like?
You mean
I've
got a
pick.
LEARY:
Right. Protons repel other protons. Appropriate distance is thus maintained between protons. The union of protons is an aspect of this science that I think perhaps no man
we
more we
proton there
is
a universe,
GIRL: What
LEARY: I'm a Libra and Rosemary's a Taurus. GIRL: What is your name? What is Rosemary's name? LEARY: Rosemary and I both have moons in Sagittarius and Aquarius rising. My name is Timothy Leary. Timothy means fearer of God, Timor-theo, he who fears God. And then I got
Leary, right?
200
What
does the
stand for?
GIRL:
LEARY:
hke Rosemary, too. Yes, Rosemary. I asked Rosemary what to do, and Rosemary
says, "Tell
GIRL:
Is
LEARY:
LEARY:
I told you. My name is Timothy Leary. GIRL: About being warm. I'm Leo, Timothy Leary.
so cautious?
LEARY: Do you think I'm cautious? GIRL: Yeah. Why? Why are you so cautious? LEARY: Well, I have this vision of all of us spinning around
energy charges. I don't think I'm cautious. to be all right, don't you?
I
as
think
it's
going
LEARY:
Well,
why
not?
to
make
sure of
what you
say. That's
against the law (laughter) and unfortunately at any moment now somebody's going to come in here and throw us all out.
but this
is
Voice: Don't
Other
GIRL
we won't
GIRL: We're
as
one now.
201
TIMOTHY LEARY
GIRL #2: Don't worry about it. LEARY: Here's what I think we
after the lecture.
should do. I think we should have three or four alternate and conjunctive points of view,
How's
that?
lecture?
I'll
LEARY:
just
rap on for a
One
the change.
of the interesting things that happens at these seminars is If you'll notice, I don't lay down a consistent, heavy
rhythm. It's deliberate. I'm not trying to develop a laser effect here. I'm usually delighted when things get thrown off because
evolution operates. During the years Mill brook (as a matter of fact, for the last four or
that's the
way
we were
five, six,
at
or
seven years) there have been continual pressures on me to set up is, to set up a messiah beat that hundreds,
to.
I
could have
done
it.
arrival.
changing,
we
kept moving,
we
perhaps, just that message to stay loose and keep changing. Perhaps some people are going to be disappointed tonight, or some
we
beat.
That
is
not the
way
you one other thing about our way of teaching. more and more energy starts around and there are always the selfish traps. You hold kicking
to
tell
want
As you
You
try to control
it.
You
use
it
egocentrically.
may be reassuring to some of you, it may make some of you feel good to hear me say that I have been pretty much 99% pure.
I
am
often mistaken
on day-to-day
tactics,
better than
50%
on behavioral
202
it,
it,
that
my
problem,
really.
The
is
where you
play the star role, and you're going to detach yourself from as
many
self.
more
difficult
it
gets
who
game, and invariably you'll find them out in the desert, out on the mountains, in some little shack. There are thousands, hun-
who are getting more high, some more through drugs, some through energy going, getting sunsets and fresh air and being out in nature, being away from people. The more energy you get going, the more erotic stuff and that's the only point of life the more you that's developing
dreds of thousands of such people
just
have to detach yourself from the social-conditioned dance. You have to do it. Eventually you just can't spend time or space in the social reward-punishment systems. You drop out both tem-
GIRL
what
who
is
naked
Man,
Voice:
Voice:
really,
We
all
have bodies.
Voices: Put your clothes on. GIRL #2: We have to decide what
because
if
do
collectively
LEARY: The
don't then we're going to be gone, any minute. Living Theatre is appearing next week in Berkeley.
we
There's topless at North Beach every night, Monday through uh, the mike is off. Are we turned off. Turned Friday. Well
203
TIMOTHY LEARY
off? (tapping).
right.
The key
and
is
the
management of space
time. Territory
is
territory that
free
The key
self.
to living a
tioning.
can
just
is
mean your
free spiritual
You can
We have
in in
been studying the problem of hedonic space at Millbrook and other Utopian communities and Utopian groups. It is useful
this primitive stage of
way was
left
the gates at
Millbrook you were getting into an emotional situation at Level Six Fear. There were armed police cars going back and forth,
gun blockades, that sort of thing. As soon as you got on the estate, the big central mansion had a lot of social conditioned games but
New York City or the marketplace But there were Level Five games. reward-punishment games going. How to run the place. How to keep the various groups in harmony. How to cook and clean. There were rules and regulathey were not necessarily the
and rewards and punishments always being set up and changed. Apart from this Level Five center, there were areas
tions
204
An
You
body. There were some people that would be at Millbrook for two or three days and they had to drive into New York City. They were always going into town. They were just hooked on Level Six thrills.
Other people would hang around the house all the time, grooving behind the fascinating and interesting Level Five games. At
you could go from Level Five to Level Four. There were other people who preferred to spend most of their time outside, and actually moved out to meditation houses, little
the house,
And
camp.
Level
ness.
then, far
up
in the
woods, about two miles away from the communes. There was a Level One
was
this
talking there.
like,
You would
"Hey, the
never
sheriff's
LEARY: Timothy
The name Timothy Leary was never mentioned on Level One, where you are and I'm not. Dear, you must be patient with me. GIRL: I know, I know. (Audience applause and voices.) Why are
Leary, right.
Voice:
you threatened? Why are you yelling? We want to hear Timothy Leary. GIRL: Listen, then.
is,
.
issue
please
GIRL:
Listen, then.
Sit
LEARY:
down, honey,
sit
down.
We
205
TIMOTHY LEARY
nings like this and
It all
all
has to do with the hedonic gap. courtesy. down too far for you. That's the problem.
You
see,
I'm
We
used to see
this at
Two.
room, and the fire would be crackling, and maybe there'd be music playing. There would be silence. You would hear
They'd be
in a
people breathing occasionally. Someone might murmur like one Zen statement that had many reverberations. Everything would
be quiet, and then suddenly some people from New York would come rattling in. I remember the time a bon vivant socialite from
New York
drinks.
He
walked into one of these rooms. He'd had a couple of said, "Hi everybody!" And then he did what anyone
would do
at a cocktail party.
You
either orbit
around the
prettiest
woman
man, right? He was coming on that way, and the hedonic gap became so obvious that he became uptight, and we had to say,
well,
we
just
in
say to
somebody
not
"How
are
You
I'm hovering between Level Four and Level Five right now. You are at Level Two and Three. Delicious. And we just
see,
must be very
By dropped
out,
simply
mean
hooked up to
reward-punishment systems. This clearly involves a movement out of the cities. It's inevitable that there be
involuntary social
a
movement
cities.
People
live in
the cities because the cities are the networks of secondary, tertiary,
quaternary socially conditioned punishments and rewards. You to the cities because you want to rip off some
206
little
are and what you're designed to do. The economics, the hedonic economics of land
is
country
very interesting. Ninety percent of the people live on ten percent of the land. This is hedonic horror. But it also means that ten
percent of the people live on ninety percent of the land! Throughout human history we have defined wealth, real wealth
as real estate.
freely
without being fenced in or fenced out. Therefore there is a perfect correlation here: The more valuable the land for hedonic purposes, the cheaper
it
is.
gets a
house in Berkeley for twenty thousand, thirty thousand dollars. For that amount of money, you can get a hundred acres in a
territory that
is
life.
(To
girl, softly:
You
sit
down. Flower,
Now,
It
thousand dollars to buy your way out of the American system. If you have ten thousand dollars, maybe a little more, you can buy
your way out of the reward-punishment system. Then you ask me, "Well, where am I going to get ten thousand dollars?" And I say, "Well, the average cop makes ten thousand dollars a year.
And
if
girl
The thing to do is to buy land. That's hedonic practicality number one. It doesn't matter whether you want to turn off or turn
on or take the
the land
fast
trip.
The
wisest
now is to buy land. And the farther from urban society the better. If you get a piece of land which has no access and no highways nearby, and not even
advice anyone can give you
is
207
TIMOTHY LEARY
nearby, and no electricity, and no urban water 50 supply, and no television within a hundred miles, well, wow an acre, right? Who wants that? Buy land that is not likely to be
a country road
is
built
up by Howard Johnson
There
is
Such land, of
spir-
no
here.
There
is
way
lem of money. You buy the land and then you deed it over to an ecological spiritual group, or some unbreakable trust. The land
that we have bought is deeded over to an unbreakable trust. It can never be used for anything that involves commercial profit-
making. In other words, you buy the land, and then you deed back to God.
it
you going to live with? Most of the spiritual groups most publicized are ashrams. People who get land and a big house and they all come and live in the big house.
are
that have been the
Who
Most ashrams
that as
this
down
more and more people turn on, more and more people get energy flowing, unless they're hooked up, either to some big vibration in themselves, or some vibration like Meher Baba, Maharishi, or whatever, or unless they're hooked up in positivenegative Tantric bonding, as this energy starts to explode there
what an acid freak is. He's an electron that's got more and more energy propelling him faster and faster and faster and farther and farther. And there's nothing wrong with that I'm not putting that down. You simply have to watch out and cheer as they spin by. As a
are going to be
freaks. That's
matter of fact any civilization that believes in spiritual growth should give its young people this opportunity to turn on, spin off, freak out for a year or two, or more.
GIRL:
Why
don't you
sit
tell
us?
About LSD.
wait
till
LEARY:
Just
back honey.
You
208
with
I'm talking about the acid freak-out! I don't see anything wrong this loose, undirected energy. I think that there should be a
period of time
be no rush to
follow
It is
I
when kids can just explore the galaxy. There should make a spiritual decision as to whether you want one big beat or hook up with a member of the opposite sex.
do
this aimless exploring.
was
always saw Haight-Ashbury as an incredible school, perhaps one of the most successful free universities in world history. Thousands of kids who would have been studying pencil sharpening at Omaha Teachers College wandered to San Francisco and
sity. I
It
if
was
a rough-tough university.
will
It
was
but that's part of the lesson, you too. There were an enormous number of very turned on gurus
specialists
on
in other areas,
Laguna Beach,
one such place where you'll find thousands of barefoot suntanned kids who are turned on, trying
(applause)
Laguna Beach
is
new
teachers,
going on
they're trying yoga and chanting and they're and vegetarians they're astrologers and they're studying with Zen masters and there's a ferment, a buzzing beehive of kids, and of
diets
and
course they are very free sexually as they should be in any sensible tribe before they've made their neurological mating choice. There's nothing negative about the acid freakout. There's nothing derogatory when I say that most ashrams are collections of free
electrons
and neutrons
who
hooked up somehave to
how and
It is
them.
typical of
It
has to be Ramakrishna, or
has to be Krishna,
209
TIMOTHY LEARY
has to be some charismatic mommy swami. There's got to some be person, or there has to be some strong identity that lays down that beat. The basic mantra. There have to be rules in such ashrams. If you sign up with Swami Bhaktivedanta and become a Hare Krishna person you are immediately handed rules. You
or
it
and
that.
you can't eat certain things, you have Ashrams of this sort have to have
can't have people taking psychedelic
And
if
And
vibe,
you
drugs
an
Om
all
the
going. Because
when
the people start taking drugs, they'll begin wandering around the
stage, vibrating to their
this
own body
beat,
are good for people who are not hooked up. Chuck Dederich of Synanon, for example, has set up a tribal group which has that one big beat it's him. He's a strong and powerful beat
Ashrams
to his place
and a good beat with no fooling around. Now, you just can't go and set up another beat. Most ashrams are set up this
way. I think that the function of such ashrams is to help neutrons and electrons get settled, and then they can decide whether they
want
or perhaps go back to a bi-polar, male-female atomic energy system. If you're on the male-female Tantric yoga, there gets to be a time when you've got so much energy going between the two of you, that, you know, you just
to stay in that kind of
life
if
you have
children.
It is
the ob-
DNA
Law
God who
is
the
new
person. So
his
program
as
its
evolved into a large, cult-like religion, leader. In 1980, Dederich pleaded no contest to
210
many
reasons
children
v^ay of
life.
When we
are there?
visit
mediately, the
first
Where
You
see
everybody eats in the same big institutional kitchen. That is the derogation of women. Because if women go into a laser system,
they have to take on that same neater beat of Ramakrishna, Meher Baba, Jesus Christ. There's always a depreciation of My
Goddess. In these monasteries and big ashrams, if each Goddess doesn't have her own fire, her own kitchen and her own home
shrine thing, then she's a dietitian.
And
right, because there are many women who, for karmic reasons, are supposed to take this neuter trip, which does lead to seeress
many ashrams
you'll
women who
some
very charged.) They take on the rhythm of the guru beat, so that they are no longer
highly Christian
women,
When you
have
women
PTA
putting
on the
whole
situation, that a
up a male
religion
woman has given up her divinity and taken which leads her to go around putting down
many
psychedelic situations are
based on the stable unit of the male-female union. At Millbrook, all the time we were operating there, we had many couples who
were
living in the
bowling
alley, the
keeping their
own
see
You
happening
we've
met
211
TIMOTHY LEARY
cabin on this
this
hill
canyon.
It
with kids, and you'll find another cabin down works there, this tribal model. Stable male-female
together.
families
It's
who band
very tricky to bring two highly-charged protons together. As you know, that's nuclear fusion. There has to be precise territorial distance
not aesthetically right. proton You're not giving each proton her due. But, if you can get three or four or five or six men who are solidly mated hooked into a
into
It's just
women
You
just can't
cram a bunch of
tribal
group of
families,
is
man
the
are
all
men
are sharing
same problems of
all
survival
women
when
women
when
or
when
they're washing, or
know
exactly
what everyone
constraining.
village,
is
We
doing and thinking. This doesn't have to be have the horrible image of the New England
this sort of thing
and
repressive.
is only one way, however, that a tribal group of this sort can exist and survive. They must take plenty of dope. Unless they have developed some tribal festivals that blow the mind regularly,
There
they gotta smoke it. You've got to have that liberating sacrament, otherwise the energy gets static. They've got to take dope, or have some mind-blowing festival, and it's got to be pretty regular, or
people freeze. Robot plastic people develop. People get uptight. There are always problems and emotions when you get highenergy people, moving at fast accelerations into a psychedelic age.
212
Of
up Level Five
telep-
A very interesting and important device in any commune of this sort is the sauna or sweat lodge. We look in gratitude to our
tutors, the
about
I
tribal
American Indians. They have so much to teach us life. In some of these communes that Rosemary and
women
And
cutting the
wood
sit
perience,
at the
same
level.
or
much
you do not need much structure Rosemary and I have lived with one
such brotherhood, and, from the time it was started until we left after six months, there had never been a meeting where people
down. Brother, there's no point to it. I mean everyone knows where everyone else is at. Everyone knows what's happening.
sat
tribe, if
you
think you have to have rules and regulations, put up lists and that sort of thing, you better just go off to the sauna and turn on, and
think
it
through.
be, in the tribal
There tends to
of choice. The ashram, on the other hand, has to have this one
rhythm.
It
atory thing.
The ashram
The
free
ashrams that we have seen that have used drugs have not lasted
very long.
Two months,
The
tribal or village
freedom. Individuality plays a big part here. Each person in such a tribe gets to know pretty well his genetic type or his astrological
213
TIMOTHY LEARY
type.
You
begin to sense
bread,
who
is
the machines.
These differences are based on very early genetic blueprints. There's one thing that's obvious to Rosemary and me as we
come back
Bay Area after some time away and talk to city heads. People are getting more proficient at the art of ecstasy, at
to the
It's beautiful that the proficiency is not or conventional. Each couple is developing its own stereotyped ritual and aesthetic style of play and display, and communication
of course becomes
much more
subtle.
determine your tribal group. Each tribe has its style. There are all these different yogas that can get you high or that can be used to
do
it
in the
them.
You
a center of tension. But in the hedonic age, the conflicts are not
much over money. The conflicts are not so much over status and power because psychedelic people tend to be hipper than that. The conflicts tend to be at Level Four and Level Three. The
so
flaps that
Rosemary and
is
have seen
diet.
over
As communication levels get more complex sensory and somatic and genetic the frictions emerge. The tribal group, based on the stable male-female union, each couple with its own house, tends to allow more variety.
Let
me
give
you an example.
five
We
fistfights in five
years at
Millbrook
years in
about
elec-
trons! In five years, with all this energy exploding, the only
two
times
we saw anyone
anyone
else,
it
was
a vegetarian hitting
You can
get very, very high that w^ay. But again, the tremendous
chemical differences betv^een bodies urge us to be cautious about coming on too strong about food rules. Psychedelic conflicts be-
come stylistic and yogic, rather than economic and material. One of the most important aspects of the nev^ society is the raising of children. At least fifty percent or more of you will have children. How are you going to bring them up? Where are you going to raise them? What does a child mean to you? Is parenthood something that you learn from Dr. Spock how to bring up a well-adjusted person? What does it mean to be a parent? This
is
It is
the key
upon
us.
absurd.
forces
When you
state
you
state-approved institution.
And you
is
blatant
1984 brainwashing.
Of
was
their
work
in the rich
man's factory.
compulsion is meaningless. In fact, if you don't send kid to the man's school, they'll come and bust you. Sending your
Today,
this
a child to a public school is just turning over the two-billion-yearold nervous system of your Buddha-nature baby to a first-grade
mind-control teacher.
I
don't
want
and
I
to put
down
little
Rosemary and
were
It
at a teachers' college
recently,
like a tough assignment to raise the hedonic level of a teachers' college, but
was
apprehensive.
looked
we
resolved nobly to do
it.
started
making comments.
said,
have the phenomenon of the pot smoking principal." And you know, they all cheered and laughed. I thought that was encouraging. Be assured that the
"Well, in the psychedelic future, we'll
215
TIMOTHY LEARY
teachers of your children will be turned
that the public schools won't be as
But in any case, the education of children, the unfolding of children, the opportunity to be present while the child blossoms
into youth,
is
to turn
to
it
such a rare treasure that you certainly don't want You want to be there
Now, in the tribal commune, of course, you have lots of children. You have the male-female unit and children coming along and each family has its own house. It's a beautiful
develop.
place for children to
watch
grow
up.
We
just like
of you
who
in psychology textbooks. Those have seen these children will know what I'm talking
about.
first place, there is an increasing tendency to treat pregnot as a disease, but as an aesthetic and spiritual experinancy, ence. This means that the child is consciously conceived, usually
In the
The pregnancy
tion.
Not only
all
Buddhistic event.
When
is
not
rushed to the hospital like a surgical case to be given anesthetics while the minor obstetrical operation is performed. The birth is seen as the highest moment in everyone's life. It is anticipated and
prepared
religious
rit-
as
it
should,
and
as
it
last fifty
has always occurred (until our Blue Cross society of the years) in an atmosphere of ecstatic liberation.
a child
is
When
grows
different attitude.
He
up
in
punishment systems are of course quite practical and obvious. The kids and adults are just playing with each other. In the sense of
216
it's
members
of the
commune
as
The
What
are
we
going to
way
by the age of seven or eight or nine, our highest fantasies. We just run out of visions. It's a very interesting challenge to be a parent
of this
We
The yoga
and your grandparents, and then as you and your wife, you and your mate, turn on, you realize that you're tracing back this network which triangulates
relation to your
mother and
father,
out and
down
parentage back for something like twenty, thirty, forty generations (before Christianity came over there and showed them
his
name
what
son of so-and-so
is tied together. You know that you are the apex of a holy father and holy mother triangle that goes down and down and down to merge with the pre-human origins of life.
Similarly, in the
cial robots, to
yoga of parenthood, your children are not sobe put in the right reward-punishment system. They
to the future.
are your
windows
is
born to you
is
The
sense of continuity
very centering.
living the
hedonic
life
life is
the emerlife
hedonic
is
or the inner
of
is
growth
as the experiment
the
way you channel the energy flow to get higher and higher and higher. Ritual is the system that will allow you to move your
hedonic index at
If
will.
you use
ritual to
change other people's hedonic index at your or magic. That's laying your spiritual trip on
217
TIMOTHY LEARY
somebody else. Ritual is supposed to be free so that participants can expand in the direction that seems right to them. Ritual is a game sequence of behaviors and costumes and arrangements and furniture defining the ways you rhythmically arrange your time and space for hedonic and spiritual purposes, not
for secular purposes.
Let
me
give
I
ago, and
you an example of ritual. I was in India a few years went to visit one of the men I think is one of the great
gurus of India. You've never heard of him. Most of the great gurus don't want followers. They hide themselves in very inaccessible places.
It's
very hard to
because they
don't advertise.
I
You have
to find them.
remember
visiting this
man named
Krishna Prem
who lived
in the
in.
mountains way behind Almora. They had just put a bus Before that, you had to walk about twenty miles from the
was
itself
New
been
He
told us
some
interesting stories
He had
an orthodox Brahmin, and you know that really can get pretty uptight. He told us that once some sincere pilgrim came into the
temple and was wearing leather shoes and
big flap
for three or four days to
it
and they had to close the temple and purify everything undo that. Or another time, a well-
meaning student came and washed the dishes when the monks were out for a walk. He didn't know that the dishes were supposed to be washed to touch that food.
Sri
in a special
me
much
was
a drag!
It
was
just
making us
Sri
Krishna-Radha
Krishna Prem: aka Ronald Nixon, this disciple of Sri Chakravarti led the cult of Almora. According to Leary, Prem believed that "il-
218
anyway.
Ritual
cizing
is
the
most
to be
aesthetic
way
of eroti-
what has
around the basic natural sequences, like getting up in the morning and bathing. A great thing in India. The devout Hindu goes down
to the
ritual,
in the
morning.
satisfies
needs at
many
levels.
was very interesting to dig the ritual that Sri Krishna Prem, after 40 years of hedonic science, had developed on his mountaintop. We went to the temple and I sat down and I was prepared to be very solemn, and suddenly, right next to
In this case,
it
me
were only four or five lovers in this ashram, they didn't have a lot of people) an incredible noise started going
(there
BA-BOOM! BA-BOOM! BA-BOOM! One man beating two drums: BA-BOOM! BA-BOOM! BA-BOOM! And there was another cat on a big triangle CLANG! CLANG! BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM! CLANG, CLANG, CLANG! They really did blow your mind. In fact, it was like a
more advanced Jimi Hendrix, right? Then, when you got dizzy, you just had to flip out on that sound trip. The vibrations in this
small temple were overpowering. Suddenly, Sri Krishna Prem bounced in. He was about six-foot-two. And he began lighting incense, swishing the bullock's tail to dust up the scene, doing his
chant.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG and the chant, and the incense going, and he's sailing
around doing things and chanting, grinning and smiling. And this whole thing took about five minutes, and he took the candy for
Pra-San and said, "Here, take some." And that was all. What we're really talking about is the erotization of routine.
There's just no excuse to ever work.
You can do
anything you
219
TIMOTHY LEARY
want.
it's
an erotic
There's no excuse to do
anything that isn't charged with your loving, erotic energy. There's no reason that any acts of your day should be dull routine.
You know,
by
ritual.
brushing your teeth, or taking a bath, or dressing are As a matter of fact, that's what we mean
and
her,
emerges your
else's ritual.
Of
course, we're
here to
teach each other better ways of getting high. There's much to learn from each other in the way of rituals, in the way of making
aesthetic the routines of
life.
But
it
really has to be
done by each
family unit. These things cannot be slavishly borrowed. When it gets down to the smallest details in life, everything becomes eroticized.
I
visiting Steve
New
Mexico.
And
they
were building
community there. The layout of the building was something they had meditated on and had given a great deal of thought to, so that the shape of the building came
tribal
out of their deepest genetic impulses. They weren't just slapping up quick housing units. It had a certain round shape, and it had a certain thunderbird-like Indian form.
It was interesting, the way they were building it. They were using adobe, and some of the Pueblo Indians from Taos came up
DNA
me
was doing it, patting it a little chanting prayer of blessing for the house that the house be a house of joy and peace for everyone who lived there. Now, I submit that a house that is made that way is more likely to turn
you on than a house
tantly
that's
made by union
carpenters
who
reluc-
work
at
union wages.
illustrations that
I
could give
220
erotic
chant you a prayer that has come out of our recent meditations. It's called "You can be anything this time around":
like to
You can
Like
it
or not, you're
God
You can
time around
warmth
time around
You can be the moon, this time around Shining down silvery light on the upturned
and
lunatics
faces of lovers
and out of
watery mother
this
time around
You can
I
Godhood
this
time around
Why
God
ing
around?
Or why not
Lie
union with
221
TIMOTHY LEARY
You can make music this time around You can make beauty this time around Why not make it a beauty trip this time around?
Of
course,
it's
possible that
you could
get
hung up
this
time around
You've done
it
before
You know
form of
Hindu myth,
call the
lower
before
we
got to be
human
beings
as
human
be-
in past time
around
You can go on
Try to get
your very
it all
another power
controlled
trip this
it
time around
up, you
this
and hook
know,
in
own reward-punishment
system
time around
You can become very, very powerful this time around You can become heavy law-enforcement, establishment,
full
Nobel
around
But you've done that before
You can
You
But
I
LSD
this
time around
recommend
it
Make it a beauty trip this time around You might even goof it this time around
Try not to goof it this time around I'm sure you won't goof it this time around
Why
don't
we
all
make
it
this
time around?
222
IN FRONT,
THAT
I'M
was two
nights ago.
(Applause.)
this
temple
is
think that
this
Because a great deal of energy is being released these evenings we're meeting here! You can sense it, the pulse and the beat. It's
happening
all
over.
The energy is building up. Last night, Rosemary and I went over to a spiritual gathering in San Francisco at the Fillmore West.
A Synaptic Festival. There must have been a flu epidemic or something because I've never seen so
It
many
pills
must have been preventative because the healthier looking people were taking the pills. In any case, after awhile, a tremendous
amount of energy began developing in the Fillmore. None of us had ever heard the Grateful Dead play quite that well. After they finished their first set, there was that precise moment of an open
223
TIMOTHY LEARY
it happened like we know it's going to continue to hapone of those pen epic, heroic moments when Don McCoy, guru from OompaH, stood up in front of three or four thousand people, with floodlights down on him, stark naked.
mike and
And
How
did
come? With suspenders and garters?" This is always a very pregnant and crucial moment. It's a very hard thing to pull off. You've really got to feel it and it's got to
you expect me
God
up
be righteously there because you can't diddle around with this energy. And some of my best friends in the past have gotten
in public,
it
often
hasn't
come
off. So,
when we saw
this
happening,
we
were
Don, go. Go, baby, go, right! Yeah, come on!" There was nothing you can do except pray, and, of course, he's questioning, too. Because we all know how it is:
then he began talking a loud and then he looked around a little scared and then
"Is this the right
it.
all
time?"
And
little
too
Big Sur Om. And then we picked up a then a Mendocino County Om, strong and then suddenly you could feel the energy of about a thousand people just know-
And
it should happen. And it kept building up and building up and pretty soon there was a man standing next to him naked, and highly-charged electrons and protons were swirling, and a girl walked up naked. It was kind of going along
that
way
in
nice, easy,
Garden of Eden
stuff
would
falter,
through
nicely.
someone, some voice, some group would come the audience. It was going back and forth, building up
And then the bouncer walked up in a very gentle way, because he has to deal with at least three naked messiahs every night
announcing they're
God
Or you
money
back.
mean
that's
where
it's
at these days.
ready to take
Bill
224
And he nodded to the bouncer as if to say "lay off" and the bouncer moved back. And the Om started coming stronger and then, the guy who was kind of in charge, it was his show, it was the Don Hendrix show, right? Because there was God copping his act and his microphone and he put his arm around Don McCoy and
a split-second decision, like,
Was
it
real or not?
woooo!
touching.
standing there in a group. Were they touching? No, they weren't I don't know. The energy was pulsing. And the audience
by
I
this
time was on
its feet.
was
talking to a reporter
Bill
really
no
get
we wouldn't
we know we can
riot
in those circumstances.
The whole
but I'd just like trip. Violence is violation to the body of another living creature.
and violence thing is a scam. You all know that for a minute to take you on the violence-is-a-scam
Is it
Now
what
it
is
a violation?
eating
it?
Not
necessarily. Is
is
it
poking
or destroying
it?
Not
necessarily. Violence
doing
human
game of fang and claw and virus and antibody. The game is set up beautifully. Balanced. Fair.
Violence
is
only one
kill
machines that
You know,
into a fight,
if
a black beating
we're led to believe from the paper that violence is up a white. If a white kid and a black kid get
well, kids will be kids.
But
a racial problem.
is
As
for vi-
well, fistfighting
olence
is
at a distance.
According to
of violence,
who
violent?
Who
225
TIMOTHY LEARY
owns the machines that kill at a Government plainly is the most
Air Force and the
chines.
Navy and
the
Army
The ma-
And
and
Add it up. The government employs 99% of About one percent of the violent machinery is in private hands the gun buffs. But they are coincidentally the most patriotic of the citizenry, thus you can righteously say that
police
sheriff.
all
violence
is
government-approved,
government-sponsored,
government-paid-for.
Of
in the
headlines,
been two groups in world history quite as good-natured as our blacks, and our young people. Dr. Hayawatha in one of his great
semantic flourishes
this
you want to know who is playing the Hitler, we ask the question, "Who's got the guns? Who's got the jails?" The blacks and young
if
one
now on
people don't. And I trust they never will. Discussions about psychedelic marriage and sexual freedom are
always good for a release of energy. I want to say again that when we're dealing with the release of erotic energy, there are no universal rules.
It's the point of living. It begins as soon as you catch on to the energy game and learn about where erotic energy comes from and how it is distributed and how it blossoms naturally and
how
it is communicated and transmitted. Try every possible way. Don't take anyone's system for doing this. Don't follow any religion based on someone's sexual neurosis, for God's sake. Keep
magic number
either
combination thereof.
Now,
that
I
nothing
should be construed to
mean
advocating or not advocating the use of dope. I do feel that the basic issue of the Aquarian Age is dope. By dope I mean
am
226
the chemicals
ligence
is
one species down there now that's caught on. Yeah. They've figured out that they can open up the hood and start playing around with the interior workings of the machine, the
yeah, there's
A new species
defined.
Dope has always been taboo in any culture, and it's got to be taboo today. Dope has always been the carefully guarded Sufi,
Rightly so, because chemicals which change consciousness just demand a new higher game. Atlantis fell because they misused dope. It's a much higher-level
Pythagorean Atlantean
secret.
game than
man
cannot make
up and re-make up
present revolution
own
is
mind.
and
which
the
the key to
it is
dope. And I'll even put this quantitatively. The speed of the revolution and the beauty of the revolution is exactly proportionate to the number of gamma consumed per square mile.
After eight years of observing the scene and seeing every possible
consciousness,
posture and attitude toward chemicals which change your I must say, flatly, that those people who have seis,
a full-
blown death-rebirth once a week, are the people that are continuing to grow and expand and to blossom more obviously and apparently than any other group.
communes where people follow this yoga, everyone knows that, on Monday, John goes up to the mountaintop or he goes down to the waterfall or he goes out to the desert or he goes down to the beach or he just disappears somewhere for 24 hours
In
and does
it
John on Friday, you wait until Tuesday. This is a demanding, taxing yoga, and it does require that you change your style of life
227
TIMOTHY LEARY
to keep
up such a pace. But it is being done. And the results are awesome. It's being done, of course, in tribal groups. I didn't have enough time last week to mention some of the
moving, as
McLuhan
which
tribes are
group of people
we must know about tribes. We are says and as we all sense, into an era in going to be much more important. A tribe is a who share a way of turning on together and a
it's
communal
doesn't
make any
difference
what the
tribal
tribe
is
as long as
it
life.
me
give
about
tribal
you some examples of some tribes. Then I'll etiquette and tribal consciousness and how to
talk
rec-
how
to respect
him and
deal with
him
Synanon
is
a tribe.
Synanon
is
a tribe run by
Chuck Dederich,
who is the chief. Now, you may or may not like their style. You may or may not like Chuck Dederich. You may not want to spend
time there, but you have to recognize that there is something really powerful happening there. That hundreds of people tend to
orbit into small
And
communal living groups around this tribal model. works. just The Mafia is a confederation of tribes. We are led to beheve
it
off
hundreds of
thousands of dollars until they get enough money that they then can put into Wall Street and do it on the million-dollar level leI think that you will find that the Mafia has probnever threatened the life or the limb or the harmony or the ably hedonic level of anyone in this room. It's only if you get into their then you'll discover that IF territory and start muscling in
gally. Actually,
To
bring
it
closer to
home, the
Now,
228
ways of
getting
ways
sexual habits. Well, too bad. They're not asking you to join their tribe, because you probably couldn't. But one thing about the
Hell's Angels (by
perfect) ... by
and
large, of course
tribal
members
are not
and
come
up
sle
in
your neighborhood and come into your apartment and hasyou, if you understand that they are a tribe, that they have
their
own
ritual, that
own
turf.
Tribal etiquette
demands
is
tribal
you know what you're getting into spokesman is, and the etiquette of establishing
extremely important and will become even
relationships. This
more important
Let
in the future.
you another example. Was it last Easter when the hippies went down to turn on with the Hopis.'* The hippies and the Hopis. The hippies expected that the Hopis, being turned-on
me
give
Indians,
would
just
groove
Haight-Ashbury style. So the front of the shrines, and so forth, and, you
in the
Well, there are exquisite, detailed, tribal rhythms, and ways of communicating. And the robot man, the man who believes that
any barroom in any street in any country and same guy there to talk to you, drinking the same "I'm from Texas, where are you from?" he drink, you know has no concept of what tribal consciousness is. And what tribal
into
you'll find the
etiquette
is.
The other
brotherhood.
group
is
the
history has given us impressive magnificent illustrations of brotherhoods of men who get turned on or caught
Human
up by some new sacrament or method, and they want to go beyond themselves, and they form a brotherhood. The Catholic
229
TIMOTHY LEARY
Church was such a brotherhood. The unfortunate thing about
such brotherhoods
is
much
strength that
they tend to expand and they get larger and larger the Knights Templar, and the Jesuit Order, the Franciscan Order and you
know how
the brotherhood
same way, and crossing themselves the same way." Yeah, sure. But the brotherhood as a small group of men seeking to do it together, still is, and will
limitations. "We'll get everyone facing the
remain, a tremendously powerful alignment of energies. I'm now discussing aspects about dropping out and living the
turned-on
life
which
week. Let's talk about money. Money is an extremely irrational topic in our society. It's more of a taboo than sex these days. The
money
thing
is
is
money
Money
use.
If
you can
But money has got to flow. Money's no good you hold it. you hold gold, then all of a sudden you have to print paper
money. Money's got to flow. Money's got to keep passing hands. If it doesn't, it gets blocked and stagnant. It's got to keep flowing.
Money
is
purpose
is
to lubricate, to
keep things
tribes, among villages, among nations. Money is a liquid. Money is flowing all the time. Now, those of us who live in desert valleys know a great deal about water and its flow. The flow of money is the flow of water.
it is
you can hold water. It is. But you've got to be coming down, and it's full of water, If hold some of it, you get a bucketful, right? want to right? you Well, then, where are you going to keep it? You get a big tank.
Yes,
true that
careful. There's a stream
is, it's got to keep flowing. If you get that water tank and keep holding it there it starts to get a money little polluted. Well, you say, there are some ways that we can get a way of screening out some of this money that's flowing
down
because
we know
it's
if
we can
get
some
230
way
of trapping
it
little bit
of
it
kind of
slides
over
little
to us.
We
we can
of that
money
that's
We
need
see.
you
realize indeed,
a trap!
the
way you
trap yourself.
money
it
is
that
it's
and you
just
and you got to know where to look come and you drill and we'll take a canteen
there
all right.
it
you
is
Those
who
have tried
Money
flowing,
and any person that wants to just go down bank will find, no one's died of thirst yet.
the dropout
life. I
want
to repeat, again,
space, land.
vision, the
more land
God.
It's
of the city. It's very important to get back in rhythm with nature. You've got to do it. You know about the levels of consciousness, one to seven, and there are drugs that can turn you on to each
level.
There are yogas that can center you at these different levels, but you've got to have space. You've got to have some place in
life
your
where you can get away from the city You know, there are places within an hour or two drive of Berkeley, where you
just
walk out and you can hear silence. The hearing of silence is one of the most intoxicating psychedelic God-given experiences.
You've got to have a Level One, a Level Two, and a Level Three spot. And it's got to be close to nature, whether it's a cavern
that
just got to
have
Another thing that you'll find is that as you're living out more in nature and on the land, your relationship to animals changes. Living an urban life, the only animals we see are domestic animals
231
TIMOTHY LEARY
or the dead flesh of animals in saran
As you're
tribal etiquette
is
on
this
any species gets out of step with interspecies harmony, trouble is there. Take, for example, the dog. Now, many city dwellers have known dogs. Perhaps you've had a dog of your
in nature
with a
lot
may
not
know
dog
ain't
dog
city
dog
doing is an
appendage of the human personality. If you live in a ranch, or a farm, as we do, where there are about 25 dogs, they're all free and moving, it's a whole different social dog trip. You discover
that dogs are little people. They've got their personalities. As a matter of fact, the more you study them, the more you're learning
about yourself.
All right.
sion:
will
now
THE
revolution.
It's
the
only
the
way
the revolution
being
well,
it's
with the
It's
way
it's
way
it's
evolving.
quite different
from the
The
old-style revolutions were concerned with space: Capture the Basliberate the quadrangle in front of the administration tille,
building, rights
office, rights
waged
Do
not
era, a
new
which
shows up the absurdity of the old system. And it has to be made more clear how absurd it is. The problem of running a university
232
is
institution.
The
are causing
the activist's
confusion on the campus. Well, the extremists, militant role, is to show how absurd mass compul-
sory state education systems really are. Reagan I'm not sure about whether Reagan's an acidhead or not Reagan spelled backwards is Nagger. The tactics in the revolution, the hedonic revolution, are very different
style labor union tactics of the 1930s. Because the aim isn't to get control of the university. We don't want our union running the
saw what our labor unions did when they got power. The activist had to climb on stage and carry the farce to
university.
We
Now
someone's got to
do
this.
You have
The young
activist,
though,
is less
likely to
when
through hitting you over the head, they have to go back to the same brutal system. But there's a probability that the young activist
can get turned on that night. Which means that his activism, all of us have to play
do it better, with more of a flourish, and then he'll leave the scene gracefully to move on to the making of a new society. The universities just can't go on the way they are. The turn-on
for a short period, will be seen accurately. He'll
drop-out philosophy
the establishment.
is
nicely set
When
going to be
was a little flap in town: "Well, there's more drug-taking in Laguna Beach" if that's possible "now that that terrible man and his wife are here." And so had a meeting in one of the boards of education in Orange they County. They were going to pass a rule saying that, from now on, any student that was caught with grass would get expelled. So they were going to run that through very quickly. Then one
a few years ago, there
233
TIMOTHY LEARY
of the board
members
said, "Well,
if
we
we
you know, isn't actually a revolution. The metaphor should be much more geological. It should be, pardon the temperature inversion, like an iceberg. There's this enormous
revolution,
The
center mass of
human
The activism on the The main surface, which at is this human consciousness any one time thing global is slowly, slowly gravitating slightly toward the warmer, slightly toward the colder. The question is, which way is it moving, and are we in tune with it? And what role do I want to play in relation
SDS
activists
and the
We, the white middle-class Christians, two thousand years of repression we've laid on the rest of the world. The reaction is happening now. The move is toward black, and the move is toward non-Christian forms of physical worship. It is moving slowly that way no matter what we do about it. The only revolutionary act is, of course, just to keep getting high, and staying high, and getting higher. The way it works is that each person that gets high gets someone around him high, and then you start a chain nuclear reaction. It's happening on every college campus. It's happening all over the world, where young people are getting together. It's moving slowly, and there will come that one point (and there's nothing any of us can do about it) when there will be that one second when the 51st percent person will get turned on and at that
to
it? It
can't be stopped.
moment,
next
it's
at that particular
moment, everyone
at
New
is
at
Greenwich Midnight.
mo-
ment when everyone catches on, that it's here the Garden of Eden take off your clothes, come on, take off your uniforms.
Exactly at that
that second
come swinging
ence.)
off.
it
The
real rev-
olutionaries today are not the political militants. They're part of the old scene that we're just about to walk out of. But you can't
until
it
will
game cause man, what an absurdity! The real the hedonic engineers. The dope dealers and
.
anymore
be-
revolutionaries are
the artists
and the
musicians.
making people feel good, making people laugh, with rock and roll, and underground cartoons, and the double-meaning songs, and anything that makes
they're turning people on,
And
erotic energy
is
on the way.
really does.
The revolution is going to be brought about by hedonic activism. We've got to have hedonic confrontations which show up the hedonic gaps that separate one from another. I'll make a prediction about what's going to happen.
Hedonic confrontations
must not be between man and man, like between us and the uptight cops. Guaranteed to bring everybody down. The basic confrontation between anyone
alive, is
and who wants to stay between man and machine. The machine is the enemy.
who
is
alive
The machine
high.
is
the devil.
Number
one:
The machine
can't get
Number
is
The machine
machine
is
The
the enemy.
Now
talk
this slavish
worship of the
machine. The most turned on people are still hung up on the sanctity of the machine. "Why, you don't mean, you're not suggesting that
I
we
on holy guru a couple of weeks said, "Well, you know, I'm for youth and everyone I draw the line at the burning of Wheeler Hall." but turning on, I said, "Yeah, I know you were going to get the Nobel Prize
talking to a very turned
was
ago, and he
235
TIMOTHY LEARY
on Earth and they were going to give it to you on the stage of Wheeler, right?" I'm not in favor of burning anything dov^n, particularly Wheeler Hall. I think all these things
for bringing peace
around
should be kept as museums. I think you should put velvet ropes all the Wheeler Halls and let children come in and show^
them such monstrosities. Before, we had free universities. But I would say this: If I have the choice between one broken head and
Wheeler Hall, I've got to say, Goodbye Wheeler. Now, I am about to tread upon the most sacred taboo of Western Civilization. Because I'm about to suggest
really very vulnerable, because
how
the machine
if
is
it
about
it.
On March
time things by solstices and times of the moon and other primitive superstitions) a group of us were at a very high hedonic level, and
we went out
It
to the road in front of the main house at Millbrook. was a private estate, a private road, made of macadam. And we had a pickax, crowbars, the whole works, and we started digging a hole in the macadam. Well, man, you know, that was really a trip because we got down one inch, two inches, three inches, six inches, eight inches, you know. There was the mac-
adam, the tar, then the concrete. So we were radioing back to our green
planet.
"Well,
^
we
haven't discovered earth yet, but keep in touch!" Right. And after about two hours of sweating, we broke through and we put our
it
was
earth.
We radioed
terra, believe
If
it
or not."
And
then
we made an
off, see?
covery.
you take the pickax and you just get a hole started, and
it,
you go underneath
it
just
crumbles
don't even have to do anything to the dig the earth underneath it a little, and
it
go crack.
stood up and
So
we
we
we
236
we looked where
joined
and where
it
44.
easy.
Now
they should
be called terrestrials
who
will
probably have
member
one square yard of earth from concrete a day. The machine can be dismantled and immobilized so simply. Because, don't forget, our one weapon against the machine and
the computer
is
that
it
The taboo
Destroy the
liberal
machine and you liberate everybody. There was an editorial in the Chronicle yesterday, the
Chronicle.
versity of
Illinois.
The students pushed the Chronicle too far, at the UniYou know what those students at the University
They burned
all
of Illinois did?
the
IBM
anarchy, man!
ler's
And
IBM
Good
mean,
What
see, you have to examine the issue: book a piece of property? Can't we duplicate it anyway? And do we have to have things locked up that way? And where is the library game at anyway? The machine mentality has got to be destroyed, with that preis
infiltrate into
You
the
cise
touch of correct rhythmic humor. It's just got to feel right. You can't make too many people feel bad or we'll suspend your
hedonic engineering Now, the obvious
out of rhythm with
license.
way
it.
to immobilize the
machine
is
to just get
Because the machine's got all Americans trained to run to the rhythm of click, click, click, click, click the machine. So all you have to do is speed up or slow down. For
237
TIMOTHY LEARY
two junk cars in the Holland Tunnel morning would slow that down. Then you'd have a thousand, ten thousand irate New Jersey commuters in their cars, and they can't get through that tunnel to get to New York to work. Their hedonic index is going to be lowered. Yeah. But when you do it, you've got to do it in such a way that the
stalling
and Gentlemen, you're being stalled for one hour a hedonic exercise. Take advantage of this hour to look around
you. Don't worry! Don't worry, because everyone knows that it's not your fault that you're late. It's always been your fault you've
been
it's
late before,
not your
fault,
excuse you. So take this hour that you're stalled in the tunnel. No pressure now. We're going to play a little groovy music in a min-
but look around you and wonder why you were in such a hurry, anyway. Plus the fact that hedonic headquarters has just
ute,
announced that tomorrow we're going to stop up the Triborough Bridge, all subways, and all entrances to New York, so that no
one need come to
everyone
to
work. So
why
doesn't
because what would hapif didn't show Take that day off that we're pen you up today? going to give you tomorrow. You'll get paid, because it's not your
just, like,
tomorrow
off,
those terrible guerrillas that did it. Take the old lady out for a drive around Yonkers or Westchester and maybe you'll never drive into New York again."
fault. It's
Hedonic
ter or
laugh a
more.
men
going right to the vulnerable funny bone, where it just becomes so ridiculous. I could give you many illustrations of how to do this,
trampling a lot of taboos. For example, the taboo about money.
238
Well,
want
of making
first
time
money is just so that it looks real, you see. But for the in human history, you see, instead of counterfeiting money
aesthetically, to give
it
money
away. Now, once you start thinking about that, and do it on a small level, it throws the whole economy into reverse. You see,
the problem used to be of getting money. But there
if
is
a problem,
get rid of
Right?
requires
more
twenty
billion dollars
We
money and have our hedonic guerrillas going around dropping it. Of course, the first place you take it
start printing
would
because the middle class neighborhoods would be uptight take it down to the poorer neighborhoods, because they won't ask any
question, right? Just lay about a hundred million dollars in any
in
neighborhood
man would
it.
say that
That would be
humor
ing a
the
little
clearer to everyone.
new money
flowing so nobody
bank robbing, the problem is, how do you get a billion dollars into a bank? You see? The more you think about it, the more
problem becomes. Another thing about money, it's such a taboo that the Red Russians, Marxian socialists, and the Wall Street capitalist Amerinteresting the
technical
know-how
to
do
man.
We
print just as
can get our sputnik up faster than theirs. We can good rubles as theirs. And with all those German
Russians could
make
just as
good
dollar
when
say,
the Russian
239
TIMOTHY LEARY
"All right, yes,
we
fight in
Vietnam,
yes,
we
kill
a thousand a
week,
bombs, yes, antibut we each other's missiles, yes, respect money, comrade? Yes. Protect the ruble. Protect the dollar? Da."
I don't want to push your taboos to a breaking point. So I won't mention what you can do to credit cards. Then you can get whole kits of fake ID's. You don't use them yourselves. You
give
if
them away. Now, you say, who's going to do all this. Well, we can persuade a thousand people to demonstrate and get their
heads knocked
in, you should be able to get ten smart people in one week to undermine the dollar, the ruble, or the pound. Every second of our lives we're in interaction with machines.
We're so trained by the machines that we have been trained by machines that we have trained by machines that we are not aware
hooked up to the machines we really are. As a little yogic Zen exercise, just observe any hour of any day. As you move, you are always adapting yourself to machines. It's an exercise you can play with. Just walk slowly across the intersection.
of
are
how we
life,
you are
either giving in to a
machine
One way
or another.
situation is always changing. The Aquarian Age is built upon time consciousness, time travel. Turning on and turning off is expanding and contracting time. It's changing every second. The problem is that your children are moving so rapidly. I think
The
is a transitional generation. You're between the mechanical and the electronic psychedelic age. But maybe the
way
rier,
it's
going,
now
We
reality
we
ill
or for well.
It's
question
how
now
It's
is
new
your
lifetime,
you
will
go through several species mutations not going to slow down. It's going
240
to keep accelerating.
It
If there's
it is
anything
there
is
we
movement
of time,
that
very
You have
get
trap
hung up on anything that's not portable. Or that's going to you back there. Because it's moving, it's moving, and it's
241
of the Future
BASIC
Before getting into the vision of the future, I v^ant to review down in the last four meetings. The first night: psychedelic psychology. How to turn on. To
down
any period of time. Turning on is slowing time down. The second night: How to tune in. After you get the energy going, you've got to orbit it somehow. You've got to get hooked
develops in
up to more aesthetic and powerful structures. The third night: How to drop out. How do you drop out of the social conditioned anthill? You do it through the tribal model
and you do it on land far away from the city. The fourth night: A nonviolent revolution in which the masculine
is the enemy. The hedonic revolution. Tonight, the vision of the year 2001, a bio-geological, bio-physical temporal vision. It's a biased vantage point, but from our perspective, those peo-
ple
who
their
this,
month, are without any question in our minds, the healthiest-looking, the holiest, most centered people that we
month
all
cities like
242
this,
new
vision. That's
how we
see
it.
is
problem of
what
to
do with
develops.
Tune
in.
You have
to
somehow
that
that
is
it
contains the energy that's increasing and growing. The structure has got to be flexible and changing and open and mov-
ing.
The energy
will go.
will
just
no end to where
you doing more and more energy coming, and you're not hooked up in a brotherhood or with a mate, what's going to happen is, you'll start creating waves. Take, for example, a famous rock singer. Turned-on energy. The groupie phenomenon is simply the highly
charged electron surrounded by a hundred adoring protons. Now the charge is such that when a turned-on rock and roll singer gets
that
whom
are
it? If
whole question is, of course, you turn on alone, and you get
moving
behind him, then with just one little finger the whole kundalini level of three thousand people moves. The hip rock stars understand this and are worried about how to use this energy. So a
hundred groupies around one pop star makes mathematical sense. Such a love structure is not stable. But that's all right. It's all
perfect. That's the single-guru
It
was
said of
Ramana
operated on a solar principle. He was the sun. He had no relationships with any individual. He just radiated that energy on
everyone
there's
who came for darshan. The energy just flowing out, and Ramana Maharishi, more and more of the energy coming,
moving through him, and he had it, he was a turned on person. He had thousands of neutrons zooming around him.
Now
the
woman who
phenomenon of the highly charged proton, or the gets more and more turned on, is really worth con243
TIMOTHY LEARY
happening and it's always puzzling, particularly puzzling to men. The girl rock singer is an example of a very turned on proton. More and more charge, more
sidering for a
see
it
moment.
We
and more energy. Then you get the Judy Garland effect. Wherever Judy Garland w^alked on stage, in the first thirty rows you had
young or middle-aged men gasping and swooning. The highlycharged proton on stage and the not-very-charged electrons or
neutrons out there.
To drop
When
always
a person
who
is
this society,
he or she
always
You can
tell when you're dealing with someone who comes from a tribe. Because tribal consciousness kind of gives a third dimen-
sion to a
human
being.
You can
usually
tell tribal
consciousness
is
groomed,
that
can
him or her
to him,
individual
who
if
is
hustling
you
own
ego
trip.
is
where
it's
going to go
robot.
the
human
species
is
The
is
it
Frenchman and
and everyone is an American. The tribal society is small, unique, original, and always in touch with its members. Being organized around a special totem or rituals, or a
everyone
is
a Yugoslav
particular
The
trial
of getting high, it keeps its individuality. hedonic revolution is the inevitable reaction to the indus-
way
revolution.
The
two or
three
much more
im-
244
aim of which
man
The hedonic revolution aims to do exactly the opposite, to detach each human being from the machine and to bring us back to the living energy that is rightfully and genetically ours. Of
course the weapons in the hedonic revolution have to be spiritualerotic. The machines have got us outnumbered and they've got
space.
You
just can't
We
have to
which
is
and the machine doesn't have a sense of humor and the machine
can't create. That's the strategy
and
tactics of the
game.
The machine has got us all so cowed that we think of the machine as sacred. The idea of immobilizing the machine, of turning
against the machine, seems vaguely crazy, or horribly primitive.
human
all
very vulnerable.
the ab-
solute cooperation of
human
out
when
uring this
all
they blow up a Swiss airline. The UC students are figout They went down Telegraph Avenue and destroyed
The
Men
if
you get on an airplane with a toy gun, you control the machine. Our vision of the world as it is will evolve. However far out it
seems,
it is
The
basic structure
it
of this vision
several years.
now an
actuality.
We've been
living
out for
It is
is
We
have
all
Utopian
visions,
The
245
TIMOTHY LEARY
Most
of the kids
we know,
their
names
already in
Develop your own vision. If there is one thing that is obvious about the world situation today, it is that there is a poverty of
vision. There's just
no
vision that
is
The
visions
If there's
anything that
we need
right
now,
wisdom of their cells visionary people, and the wisdom of nature around them and come up with a plan. It's all up for grabs. There literally is no big vision. Nixon doesn't have one. The Communists don't. A few years ago we talked to
will listen to the
who
We
knew many people in the Rand Corporation, the Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn's cult. We knew people who knew something about Communism. We kept asking: What's the vision.^ What's the future plan? What's their idea of society? Where are they going? They are struggling to survive, the Rand Corporation. Working
on
It's
up
for grabs.
want
to
tell
now when
teetering
human
human
situation
is
more
It
why
any time in recorded history. settle for less than a grand plan?
could go
think
Our
You may
of us as outlaws but
we
you can
biology. Build your religion, build your vision in tune with that.
Moses came down from the mountain. He had a flash up there. He saw the whole thing and the burning bush and he came down and he said, well, no adultery and no stealing. All right. But there are more ancient laws than the Mosaic and these will be our
guides as
we move
is
Our
vision
bio-physical, evolutionary.
The
geological fact
is
246
that
we do
live
on a rock, a
and then
there's
remains of nufire
down
there
below
us,
and above
it
this
scum, a film,
at the
feet of
scum. All
life lives
which
is
called topsoil.
Oh, sometimes
its
of the sea,
it
may
harmonious
it.
life is
to
understand the physics of it and the biology of is that metal and concrete and fire and
The
fact of the
electricity destroy
As soon
as
you
start bringing
up metal from below up to the some of the scum. As soon as you bring pestart laying
down concrete
this precious film that keeps life going on So that rule number one in our vision is that you have
to keep
ity
and metal and technology and machines and electricunderground. You have to let it be where nature meant it
fire
to be.
In the year 2001, everything that
we now
see as mechanical
And
in
will be will
Square.
doesn't
Now
it's
just so obvious.
Once, sometime in the spring at Millbrook, three or four years ago, we were building a shrine in the woods and somebody had
an ax.
go.
If
you
You know,
a seed next to
you can tell where it wants to just plunk, drop on the ground. If you drop it, you know what will happen. The seed will start
ax
fall,
it'll
going up and after ten years, that piece of metal's going to be buried underground and the tree grows higher. Let it be!
If all life, all
mammalian
life
was destroyed on
all
know where
247
the metal
would
be,
you'd
TIMOTHY LEARY
have to dig for
it.
It's
program
remember, Rosemary and I, and our son Jack, were on a radio in New York City, and there was a discussion about the
2000, and on this program was Hermann Kahn, the defense expert who talks about the unthinkable, the megaton
future, the year
killings
and
all that.
Strangelove acidhead. Meditate on that. But in any case, he was discussing the year 2001. Statistically, he had all the curves and graphs, and
after.
He was the man they modeled the movie Dr, He is an intelligent man, he is also an ex-
according to the way it was all going, in the year 2001 everything would be like Los Angeles. Because Los Angeles is always ten
years ahead, right?
And
it
was
interesting.
in
He
2000
He
I
could prove
it
by
statistical extrapolations.
bigger rollercoasters
and bigger amusement parks and bigger In the first place, the first thing that must be said
if
there
is
one,
is
that
all
technology
is
going to
have to be underground.
with a
German
accent, said,
"Well, what an original suggestion! But it can't work because it would cost too much. How would you pay for it?" Our son Jack was sitting there and he said, "Well, have every one donate $24,500 from their annual salary." The facts of the matter are that New York City is underground right now. Really.
You
it,
differ-
smog.
the question, well,
Once you
what
get the
first
are we going to do above ground? There are not going to be any machines up there.
248
We
divided the
human
lifetime.
third of
it
wandering around
third of
it
will
And you spend a third of your time in time means simply turning off. Every midnight, when you go to sleep, you speed up the experience of time. Zap! Eight hours go by, and you wake up. The
research takes place.
travel.
Time
travel
is
one-third.
West Germany, and Mexico, there are what are called sleep clinics. You go there and you pay a thousand dollars and they'll put you to sleep. You can stay asleep for two to three
zerland,
weeks.
to get
It's
It's
a great
way
resting
conditioning system has laid on your body, you allow the healing
to
go on.
It's
something
way.
When
your
ego consciousness leaves your body, do you die? No. Your body's damn glad to get rid of you! Now that he's gone, we can get
things cleaned up! Turning off.
When you
go to
sleep,
you wake
fresher
up,
many
hours
later,
but you
in the sleep,
morning than you were the night before. After 21 days of you're fresher and younger than you were when you brought your ulcer in from the Wall Street office to take the sleep
So there's an interesting paradox, an interesting challenge.
cure.
When you
You
turn off consciousness you reverse biological aging. sleep for 21 days while all of your waking friends have had
and
tension.
They
you're biologically
went to
There are very interesting possibilities here. In the three-way system that we project in our vision there will be more
sleep.
249
TIMOTHY LEARY
and more time
not visionary,
travel for longer
it's
happening
all
and longer periods. Again, this is the time, right now. It raises fas-
cinating problems.
In the future, the basic law of
mankind
will be this:
Everyone
will.
You
won't have perfect spatial freedom. There will be hedonic computers which will determine how many traffic lights there have to
be and
all that.
Two automobiles
or two auto-tube cars can't be in the same place at the same time.
Your freedom is somewhat Hmited spatially. But no one, no government, no computer should have the right to check you temporally. That's the crucial political issue of the future. Internal
yourself
freedom. The right to control your own consciousness and to turn on and to turn yourself off.
In the future,
say you are disappointed in the national computer lost. Maybe the less hedonic group, the
let's
about time.
you can just go to sleep what the Aquarian Age is all about. It's That's what 2001 is all about. Freedom in time.
the election? Well,
Movement
closer
coming
and
There
and time
politics.
Human
change completely. But these conflicts, will be minimized and harmonized, and will not become as untidy as the space conflicts.
Time competitions
is
Now
want
to give
you a
specific
example of
how
life
will be
with a young couple, about to have children. Now, in our vision, children will be born on the beach. Each tribe will have beautiful cottages with platforms exin the year
start the cycle
2001. Let's
fittle
is
bays,
and they
will live
an
When
the baby
how
it
250
And
the
first five
an amoeba.
It
swim
before
it
walks. During
or six years,
you go to play
The baby
tide
will be developing,
how
South
may sound far out, but many much like that and would be
living that
way today
if
over and built those square churches and brought in the airconditioning machines. These shoreline people will really get amphibian consciousness. They tell stories of those old Hawaiian
tell
our heritage. The next five years of life (7 to 14) is lived in the forest park above ground. The child recapitulates the natural, evolutionary
DNA trip. The child will live off the land and do the mammaUan
trip
it's
and
will
until
like to
How to
and they
They
will gather
and they
will
hunt
you
see, they'll
be very high, they'll be in an LSD state, really communicating with the animals, communicating with the plants.
The theory
is
your mother and your father's electron-proton systems literally clicked zzzzzzzzzzz. That thunderous light-flash-hit when your
mother and
ated.
trip
father's
DNA
came together
cre-
once single cells. Then came that nine-month inside your mother's womb. We went through the whole busi-
We
were
all
251
TIMOTHY LEARY
ness: single-cell, four-cells, then early
had
little
scales.
amphibian; we had gills, we code was figuring out this whole web, a
protein,
more amino
gills
much
hair,
no
we took the whole evolutionary trip, that nine-month period, then we were born. In our vision, you do it a third time. You really
experience
it
primate ancestors, your amphibian ancestors, and your human ancestors. That's going to be the point of life in the future, to
really find out
who you
are,
and get
all this
ancient energy,
all
DNA
and behavior.
this
Then, at the time of puberty an interesting thing occurs. During period when you live out here in the overground film, the
film of
No
no machines, it's all manual. It's all oral. written communication systems, no Gutenberg printing
life,
there are
presses.
There
who
music of
flutes,
bamboo
things.
Oh,
much
But
to learn, so
fire
So
and metal are considered extremely sacred, because you know, you don't want an animal running around, using fire that way. Fire is only entrusted to the most saintly person who has
been through the evolutionary cycle several times and is so pure and understands what life really is that he would never think of
hurting a living thing with fire. Some may think this life to be primitive cavemen or primates in trees, but actually it is highly evolved. When you turn on with plants, what you are doing is
conspiring with seed. Because the vegetable kingdom is not our enemy. There would be nothing that would delight the plant king-
dom more
than to build a bigger Sequoia with low branches so a whole tribe could live in one tree. You know, you're going to
252
it
you have
is is
to
The Lamarckian-Darwinian
conflict
just a con-
Darwin
right
when he
says. Well, a giraffe can stretch his neck higher and that's not going to affect his progeny. It isn't the but higher stretching that does it. At the level of morphology, at the level of
the body,
is
Darwin
is
right.
But at the
level of
DNA-RNA, Lamarck
all
DNA
in the
and RNA.
neck there.
RNA says: You know, there's a little strain up DNA says: Okay, in the next model let's put
at this
new concept
of psyche-
In the religion of
life,
the
DNA code
is
the bible.
We continually
study the
DNA
code.
What
mind trip on the DNA code. Where is she going? What's the next move? And instead of man's mind imposing genetic structure on the DNA, we'll be listening to the DNA and
laying your
collaborating with
it. It
may seem
a little far out to you that kids and they won't be able to read and write
but they'll be so wise. Again, this is not science fantasy. We are doing this right now. We know several tribal brotherhoods right now where the parents
quite deliberately
that's a far
do not send
You know,
friends of
young
ours
who
When
do
di-
we
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet Chevalier de Lamarck: This French evolutionist and author of Philosophiezoologique postulated that acquired
characteristics can be inherited
subsequent breakthroughs.
253
TIMOTHY LEARY
lemma, because, you're thinking,
if
not going to be able to read the astrology books. Do you have the guts to do that? To not ship your kids off to learn public
school subjects and predicates, and verbs, and all that? Do you many of our brothers and sisters
right
now. And
it
on the kid
either,
you
can't
bad.
They
to.
learn to read
later.
You can
try
it
now
if
you
want
typing helps out here. The Virgo kids seem to want to go to school more than the Taureans. This
is
And
DNA
not fantasy;
it's
sisters right
now.
up
like this.
You have
your ranch and you have your farm thing and each family has its house but then, each tribe had its place way up in the mountains
or in the valley, which is really secluded. One is way up in Montana, another is down is southwestern Arizona, where nobody
ever comes through this rough terrain.
man
or any
years in
some of
these places.
You have to pack in. There man in there for maybe And these tribes have maybe
gamma
life
pure without any machinery around. It's happening right now we're not playing primitives. It's what we're designed to do. After all, the DNA code took two
rice,
some brown
it's
just
and
body, to survive out there on the mounif you don't use it we're just going to
little
bodies.
Do you want
erotic charge?
do with your
254
do you do
if
you
did your grandmother do? You figure it out. What would you do? Do you think this is an insoluble problem? Do you think that the risk of appendicitis will drive us back to become
What
an animal species?
It's
a gamble.
Oh,
it's
a risky
life sisters.
In
addition to appendicitis and hepatitis and venereal diseases, in addition to that, there's poison ivy and poison oak, and rattlesnakes.
Rosemary and
That's a
trip.
spent last
summer
second
is,
Danger
how they did it last time. pents. Remember the Garden of Eden? No. Somehow or other we've got to figure out that God in the beginning put the rattlesnakes here,
baby. That's
they've been here longer than to
we have
in this valley.
We've got
somehow come
you
just have to be aware every barefoot at night that you're sharing the valley with lethal ser-
pents.
After a while you're cautious and you're careful, and it's groovy because you're not just thumping through the bushes thinking about Wall Street, you know. And the first time you've ever heard
a rattlesnake
rrrrrr
do
his thing
when
you're walking
down
mountain
encounter.
trail,
whew,
Appendicitis, rattlesnakes,
pendicitis
you plan
for
it.
If
someone
gets ap-
down
him
out.
Our
when
of us
they're sick
this.
Some
even shot up
255
TIMOTHY LEARY
Now
it
goes like
this.
When
They can start raising a family or they can go to sleep for 10 or 15 years, or they can go underground. Typically, I think most people will want to take the evolution trip again. As parents, you're a wise twelve years old and
code has got you you've had this incredible trip. And the so horny. There's no question about it. You've got so much erotic energy going that the idea of going to sleep or going underground
DNA
computer symbols is out. You're going to go down to that beach, and you're going to start having children. It's just
to master
time as parents so that by the time you get to be 24, 25, 26, 27, you really understand it. You've been through it four times, once in your mother's
trip this
by the ocean and on the mountain top, and the fourth time, bringing your kids up. By that time, you have a
womb, once
yourself,
glimmering of what
on this planet. After you've brought can make another decision. You can go you you want to or you can do it again, or, more likely,
life is like
you probably want to go underground. The underground society of the future is going to be fascinating. Men will be turning on, you know, with the elements. Psychedelic
sessions with electricity, mineral unconsciousness, atomic energy.
Did you ever have a thousand-gamma sessions with a rock? There's a lot of communication that can go on. They've got a whole mineral ecstasy thing going there. Great leaps and bounds
in physics
and geological
energies.
underground tunnels from here to Moscow zip! Air-propelled. There will be space travelers out there. Telepathy. At the age of 27, 26, you won't be able to read and write. No problem. You'll go down there and they will start turn-
Oh,
you on to efficient neurological learning. Learning which is hooked up to the incredible potential of the nervous system. You
ing
will learn all of
256
We
down
there of course
is
The nucleus of the atom, the proton, is an incredible galaxy and universe of energy charges miniaturized. One thing you can say about God in addition to being a musician and
clear structure.
liking sex
is
a nuclear physician.
At any time, when you are underground, you have any number You can go to sleep. You can go back up and do a teaching thing on the land, teaching the DNA code thing, teaching
of options.
the
new
generations
how
is,
parent
trip again.
Or you can
stay
The time
wife
may may just want to speed up time for a while, and slow down your body thing. Take twenty years off. Anyone in this room who is born, say around the year 1945, will be 56 in the year 2001. When you and your mate are 56 in the year 2001 you may decide you want to take like a 30-year
decide at any time that you
sleep.
Okay, you go to
sleep
in the year
2031,
right?
By
waking you
younger than your children. Unless your children have taken a time-travel sleep trip in which case your children
up.
will be
You
may
not be there to wake you up. You'll be making rendezvous in the future
baby.
Meet you
a gamble,
it's
always going to
dicitis.
be a gamble. There's always going to be the problem of appenAnd waking up in a time culture when it's all changed.
in,
is,
by
defi-
The
been
tribe
is
a time-traveling unit.
Throughout
human
history
its
tribal
257
TIMOTHY LEARY
also migrates in time. That's
trust government likes thing Hitler wanted to do was wipe out the Jews. But the Jews have got a tribal thing going that transcends national borders. Time travel
or no insect-
The
gypsies, Hitler killed all the gypsies, because the gypsies are
tribal,
they just
move
move through
As
time, too.
The Communists don't no big national stand tribes. The tribe is the thing
a matter of fact,
in space,
at
you in time. Because one of have members time, you'll any your tribal family underground, you'll have members of your family asleep, you'll have
it's
and
members
You'll be
of your family
in
on the beach,
you'll
have members of
and
making time rendezvous. As we expand the dimensions of consciousness (and that is the purpose of life and the good of this Utopian plan) we increase the
importance of love and
trust. trust.
The
transition depends
on love and
When you
is
go to sleep, look
trip
at
extremely exciting. There's always a distrust when you go to sleep. The law and order people say, we've got to have a society in which decent citizens
can go to sleep at night, right? Throughout the long millennia of evolution it has always taken a bit of doing to get secure eight-
hour
sleep.
I
You've got to have the cops on the corner. Jack Valsleep better at night because
enti said,
Lyndon Johnson
is
in the
hedonic
point is correct. He felt better going to sleep knowing that he had a friend, and tribal crony of his who has his finger on the button,
right?
It's
258
You
will
will
go to sleep
not be sleep process seen as a dull, unconscious storage where you put your body in the bed like I put my car in the garage for the night. That's not
itself will
it at all. Sleep is an incredible adventure that you take with your wife or your mate or your friends. And you can plan it in such a
The
way
asleep.
I'll
see
you
in
my
dreams. The psychedelic possibilities of turning off have hardly been tapped and define a fascinating frontier.
relationships
is
going to change
creatures that
little
lust for
mother, well, you can wait fifty years and you'll be ten years older than your mother. Hang around till she wakes up. You'd better be good to your kids, because it's your kids that are going to be
waking you up. Tribal partners, baby. You better be good to your old man, because, you know, we're increasing the time dimensions of mortality. We're not just here zip-zap do your quick
thing,
fast,
Goodbye.
It's
off.
You know
mendous
has
its
that
smoking a
joint
complex and beautiful dimensions as well. Please do not be inhibited about planning your science
future.
in this
Why not plan a loving science fiction future? Every person room has a better vision of how the year 2001 should be
than Mao-Tse Tung. Or De Gaulle. Or Nixon. I just know that to be true. So why be modest? It may well be that this has all
happened before.
When you
start playing
around
259
TIMOTHY LEARY
that's what all heads do) surprising things can hapOnce pen. you take psychedelic drugs you catch on to the time
mension (and
continuum.
It's
about time.
generation to figure this out in our clumsy way? generation to discover LSD? Hardly likely. I
Are we the
Are we the
first first
mean, when you look at those pyramids in Egypt. Why did they do that? Why did they have this tunnel and secret room down
there,
way
inside.
They had
this
hedonic gear ready, so that when the dude woke up from his time trip, there was his wife, and there were his servants, and
all this
Now
maybe
that's just
symbolic. Maybe they didn't really do it. Maybe they were teaching us about the possibilities. I don't know. Or maybe that's what
flying saucers are.
a time trip
in
My
God! Reagan's
Show
yourself to people
who
in
are taking
LSD down
Joshua Tree,
people and acidheads. Well, it just does create more humility, really, the time thing. You're a little more humble with your children, and you're a little
California half of the population
UFO
parents.
(Baby noise in audience. Applause and laughter.) You see, we've just been kicking around on the surface.
You
can get into more detail here. Details about the possibilities. Details about the practicalities. Like what are you going to do tomorrow that is in line with your vision? Because, look, don't
waste time, brothers and sisters. It's all up for grabs, no one vision is any better than yours. I don't see any great visions around. I
read the Reader's Digest, too. Come on. Don't waste a lot of time and drag on with these low-level games. Get your vision going.
There's no reason
why you
Rosemary and
LSD
session
260
back to
us.
what going The love and trust room, in this ad hoc, five night religious cult we have going in this Junior High auditorium. You know, a lot of this was talked about by H. G. Wells. He wrote a book many years ago, and he said there was going to be
you know, keep it going. Keep and humor we have right in this
two kinds of people, the flower people, wandering around the land you know, flowers and dilated pupils, loving, and then you have the underground machine people that came out and ate the
flower people. (Pause as a message
Do you want
it?
to read
it.
OK,
I'll
read
brought up to the stage.) Well, should I read it or will you read "Tim: Here's something I wanted to send
is
it?
across to you.
New
of the physical to superphysical. In the beginning sex was void and without form. The two parts of love, man and woman, within
the love, looked
down upon
the sex
and dug
it.
own through two parts of love, man and woman within the love, with feeling, and it was so. The new man and woman are evolved by the Second Coming of One Soul dreaming through the eternal
mind
into the other soul."
You know,
there are so
it's
all perfect.
All
and emotions and sensing and thinking and bodying and re-incarnating. There are lawful things to learn. What determines your conditioning? What makes you
these levels of consciousness, sleep
mad? What
Learn the laws of what you're chasing and what bells make you jump to the left and right. Learn it all and go beyond that and turn on your senses and turn on your
turns
you
off?
H. G. Wells: The author of The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds was also a human rights activist who believed in free
love, progressive education,
261
TIMOTHY LEARY
body and get the erotic energy going. And keep looking around and listening. Listen, listen to the DNA code. Listen to animals,
listen to children.
And listen,
we
talk to people
is this: Most people don't listen, really. Listen. Listen to plants and listen to animals and listen to rocks and stars and listen to
your mate. And don't settle for anything less than your divinity. You can be anything you want this time around. Think big. Do it. Do it. Do it for yourselves and do it
children. Listen to
for others.
your kids, because these kids just demand something bigger and better than this anthill society. Keep movAnother ing. Moving in space. Moving in time. We'll meet again.
Do
it
for
space.
star.
262
Cybersex
Platonic Love
AM
I ers
I
Autodesk, a Sausalito computer software company. watch a woman wearing tennis shorts leaning ahead expecting
a serve.
On
woven with
opaque no strings.
goggles. In her
left and swings furiously at the empty air. no!" she groans in disappointment. "Too low!" She crouches again in readiness, then runs forward, leaps up,
"Oh
slams a vicious volley at the empty air and shouts in triumph. The video tape then changes point of view. Now I am seeing
what
am
in the court.
The
and
low-
bounces back to
my
left.
My
Her goggles are 3-D picture of a racquetball court. She is in the court. As she moves her head orientation/direction sensors in her cap show her left, right, up the left wall, the right wall, the ceiling. The movement of the ball is calculated to reflect "real life" gravity and spin.
This
is
woman
am
It is
Some
literary
computer folks
call
it
265
TIMOTHY LEARY
the Greek philosopher
who
imagined forms 2,500 years ago. We no longer need to press our addicted noses to the
like grateful
TV screen
on cyber
amoebas.
Now we
clip
goggles,
on the other
Working, playing,
developed by NASA. The idea was that Houston could use their gloves to direct robots on the moon. Architects and engineers are experimenting with an Autodesk device to walk around in the electronic projections of
This technology was
technicians in
first
down
it's
arteries
and
veins, observing and manipulating instruments. Does this sound too Star Trekky to be real.^ Well
already
happening.
Do you remember
last
Christmas
when 600,000
American kids equipped with Nintendo Power Gloves were sticking their hands through the Alice window to move Ninja Warriors
around?
Within only
five years
Dan
Quayle administration) the market will be flooded with goggles and cybersuits for folks who want to "beam" into the technicolor
wonders of
The implications of
staggering.
For example, within ten years most people will not have to "go" to work. You get up in the morning, shower, and then dress
suit. And you'll "beam" your brain to work. have to fight traffic in your air-polluting 300 you horse-power car, hunt for a parking space, take the elevator to your office. No more flying, strapped in your seat in a monstrous
in
your cyberwear
will
No more
toxic- waste-producing
fighting jet-lag as
air-polluting
jet-propelled
sky-dinosaur,
266
Cybersex
Tomorrow your
on the wings of
electrons into
beam
your folks in Seattle all without physically leaving your In three hours of electronic global house-calls you room. living can accomplish what would have taken three days or three weeks
visit to
of lugging your brain-carrying body like some slab of inert flesh. This is the Information Age. And the generator-producer of
information
is
your
enormously powerful machines of the Industrial Age moved our bodies around, so tomorrow, will our cybernetic appliances zoom our brains around the world at the speed of light.
We
We
press
your
sister
Anita (who
is
actually standing
on the lawn
(who
is
actually
backyard in Osaka). Each of us in turn "hits" the Platonic and we watch them soar down the fairway. After finishball golf ing the first hole, we can "dial-beam" to Anita's patio to admire
her garden and then zap over to the tee of the second hole at St. Andrew's. And then zoom to the Louvre to look at that painting
of Cezanne that Yoshi was talking about. Within ten years, most Americans will be spending half of their waking hours zapping around in electronic environments. Any
spot in the world you can think of can be dialed up on our screen. Any landscape, surrounding, setting, or habitat we can think of or imagine can be quickly fabricated on our screen.
concerned by the prospect of human time trapped like zombies in the inorganic, plastic-fantastic electronic world. They fear that this will lead to a depersonalization, a dehumanization, a robotization of
Some
thoughtful
critics are
beings spending so
much
267
TIMOTHY LEARY
human
nature.
is grounded in the horrid fact that today the American around six a hours average spends day passively reclinin front of the boob tube. And three hours a day peering ing
able apprehension
company's computer
screens.
The
optimistic
human
common-sense
1.
steps:
2.
To cure To end
TV.
TV
addiction.
centralized
3.
To empov^er the
and create
electronic realities.
How? By means
ing
Another example? A married couple, Tom and Jane, are v^alkdown the Malibu beach. In material form, you understand.
Real foot-massaging sand. Real skin-tanning sunshine blue sky. On loving impulse, they decide to spend a funny, loving minute
or
two with
flip
who
is
in Boulder,
Colorado.
They
down
which look
like sunglasses.
The
wife punches a few numbers on her stylish designer wristwatch. The husband turns on the one pound Walkman-like receiver. In
Boulder, Annie accepts their "visit" and dials them to a prefabricated pix-scene of her patio. She is smiling in welcome. She is actually in her living room but electronically she is in her electhey were they turn their heads they see Annie's husband Joe walking out waving. He points out the roses that have just
tronic patio.
there.
They
see exactly
see
if
When
bloomed
Jane are over the
dog.
Remember, at the same time Tom and "really" walking down the Malibu beach. They can look goggles and watch two kids in bathing suits chasing a
in the garden.
want
268
Cybersex
They
dial her
new
dress.
living
It is
wonder about
Is this
this transcontinental
home movie-making.
pensive toy for affluent Yuppies, playing while the rest of the
world starves?
Happily, the answer is "no." The equipment used by this family costs less than a standard 1990 TV set, that pathetic junkfood
tion.
spud-box with no power to store or process electronic informaThe designing and digitizing and communicating of
phone
call.
you
to receive/transmit
more information
than
clumsy airwave broadcasting networks. And a thumbnail-sized brain-chip holding a billion transistors will allow
all
the
you
to store
will
What
and process millions of 3-D signals per minute. we possibly do with these inexpensive extensions of
is
so down-to-earth
human.
We
shall use
at
unima-
To
sibilities let
help us imagine one dimension of the communication posus consider the erotic interaction. Cyril Connolly once
wrote, "Complete physical union between two people is the rarest and yet not quite real, for it sensation which life can provide
stops
when
Connolly's
"physical"
signals,
comment
is
communication
bodies
rubbing
problem is simple. Electronic appliances are beautifully cooperative and totally self-directed. Hey Cyril, if you don't want to be disturbed, just turn the gadget off when you head for the
to the
sack.
And
let
then turn
it
to.
But
fers to
implication. Connolly reas "the rarest sensation which union" "complete physical
us examine a
more profound
269
TIMOTHY LEARY
life
can provide."
Is
the interplay of empathy, wit, fantasy, dream, whimsy, imaginaIs he scorning "Platonic Love"? Is he implying that sex be mindless acrobatics? A grim, single-minded coupling that can be disturbed by the tenders of metaphysical sex?
tion?
Here
day
is
happen the
after
lovers,
Mary and
They
touches her watch and suddenly they are body surfing 12-foot rainbow waves which are timed to their erotic moves. Sounds of
liquid magnificence, timed to their moves, flood their ears.
giggles
Mary
vortex
down which
Mary
eagle.
is
dances
fearless
as a
softly
breathes.
Plato, as
it
turns out,
said that
The
here
most physical
most "complete
unions" are graceful motions unless enriched by imagination. And is the charming enigma, the paradoxical truth that dare not
show
really
its
face. Usually,
even in the great fusion, neither partner flashing through that delightful, adorable
cases,
if
To appear without your Platonic gear would be like showing up in public stark naked. A new global language of virtual signals, icons, 3-D pixels will be the lingua franca of our species. Instead of using words
tional as the wearing of body-covering clothing.
270
Cybersex
we
shall
communicate
in movie-clips selected
The local verbal languages will, of course, remain for intimate, non-Platonic communication. Nothing from our rich, glorious past will be eliminated. When we extend our minds, empower our
brains,
we
shall
we now
We will
develop exquisite bodily expressions, not to robots, but to perform acts of grace.
work
like efficient
The main function of the human being in the 21st century is imagineering and electronic reality fabrication; to learn how to express, communicate, share the wonders of our brains with others.
271
Electronic Sex
The
ize,
is
to Personalize, Popular-
and Publicize new ideas and new mind methods. To perform this function, to Personalize, Popularize,
ing chapter.
THE YEAR
ital
1988,
MANY BRANCHES OF
and
dig-
how
as
an
information-species
The
basic units of
highly concentrated
information,
programmed
to flick
ON/OFF
according to minia-
turized algorithms.
According to neuro-psychologists, the human brain is a "universe" of 100 billion neurons each of which has the thought processing capacities of a powerful computer. The task of our species
{homo sapiens
igate,
sapiens)
is
to learn
how
this array of
272
Cybersex
verse
is
a linguistic system.
i.e.
Our
species assignment
is
to learn
how
to talk digital,
to receive, process
and communicate
in the
reading rooms, urban networks of invisible digital data which people could enter, via the screen, and then explore, browse, graze, mine and harvest a
libraries, archives, depositories, universities,
new
universe of information.
By 1988, Nelson's prophecies were becoming realized. Groups of cybernauts, digital pioneers, were building the mansions of data which Ted Nelson had so brilliantly blueprinted.
At the same time, William Gibson had just finished his cyberspace novels: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Burning Chrome, and
Mona
Gibson succeeded
Information
Culture of the 21st century in the most nitty-gritty, human terms. In Gibson's future. Information is the vehicle, the currency, the
environment of
is
human
existence.
The
explored, surveyed, colonized, domesticated, built-up into of data. All accessed through the screen.
By
and
the year
2030 humans
are spending
interacting in the
was busy developing software with the Futique In-Corporation which empower programs along individuals to build digital models of their minds which are acAt the same time (1982-88),
cessed through the screen.
The
idea
is
New
We
our software, the more liable the player to become addicted. We were solemnly advised by Software Executives that a good program should have 40 hours of play! Now we liked the idea that
273
TIMOTHY LEARY
intelligent people would spend time interacting with our programs. But forty hours? What about the player's homelife, lovelife,
meat-machine obligations?
up
was understandable.
one would play with
It
was
inevitable that
intro-
digital patterns,
Great Cyberpunk heroes like Charles Lindberg, the Lone Eagle, were inspiring models of soUtary pleasure. But should Digital Pilots log all of their Digital time
toy.
in their
new
selves shamelessly
rooms, flying solo around cyberspace? Rewarding themwith auto-stimulation of the brain?
new and
of pleasure was interpersonal. For this reason the first software program produced by Futique (Mind Mirror) featured mind interplay; sub-programs which en-
couraged users to explore minds in pairs or groups. By 1988, all of FUTIQUE'S programs were based on INTER-
SCREEN. The
personal Computer.
In 20 years, we expect that most of us will be spending seven hours a day actively navigating around the oceans and continents of digital data the PSYBERNETIC universe within our brains
and the
CYBERNETIC
By 2008, no one over the mental age of five will spend much time torpidly viewing TV screens. You will edit Dan Rather's version of the news. Youl You! You! will interact with Rom-Rambo
and Rom-Cosby on your screen. But most of your time will be spent
digital-realities will
in interpersonal
computing,
human communication.
Interpersonal computing does not lead to an "either-or/all-or-
none"
split
274
Cybersex
Interscreening does not imply a derogation or neglect of fleshinteractions. Intimacy at the light-speed digital level enriches ex-
changes at the slower warm-skin levels. If you can't interscreen tenderly with him, how can you possibly fuck him?
You do not lessen the richness of your murmur-touch contact with your lover because you also communicate by phone and FAX and hand-scrawled love notes.
Your warm-breath should be much more
ality
option added.
young woman named Vicki is alone in her bedroom. She sits on the edge of the chair with her legs spread wide. She is looking intently at a computer terminal on the desk in front of her. Vicki is a novice Cyberpunk. She is using an electronic communication device for her
tional or
own
private pleasure.
Without
institu-
letters
which wiggle
is
breathing not comfortable a more into She taking position, squirms heavily. her optics off the letters squirting across the screen like spermatozoa.
Mode
Vicki's
screen:
275
TIMOTHY LEARY
OH RON WHEN WE'RE ON LINE FEEL SO BAUDY. WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO BE SUCH A GOOD TRANSMITTER? YOU DOWNLOAD SO GOOD! TELL ME PRECISELY HOW YOU WANT ME TO INTERSCREEN YOU. CAN SLIDE MY JOYSTICK IN YOUR F-SLOT? WANT TO PUT SOME LOVE-BYTES ON YOUR KEYBOARD. LIKE YOUR BIG STRONG HARDWARE. LET ME BOOT-UP YOUR MALE-MERGE FUNCTION! WHEN READY YOU CAN PRESS ENTER.
I I
INTERSCREEN
DISK
OOOH!
CYBER-NETWORKS
Vicki
is
using her computer to boot up and artfully program Her software is linked up, via tele-
phone, to the computer of a man named met well, never seen in the flesh.
. .
Ron whom
Vicki and
Ron
first
inter screened in a
access conference
like
.
. .
on CIA terrorism in Nicaragua. They came to each other's ideas, so they agreed to chat on a private line just the two of them exchanging electronic signals to each
Well, one thing lead to another, as it often happens in malefemale conversations. At first they joked and flirted. Then they
started having imaginary dates. First, they'd select a movie. Af-
their
their reac-
Then
started
as
town
276
Cybersex
VICKI,
I'D
THINK
WHY DON'T YOU COME IN FOR A NIGHTCAP? LET ME SHOW YOU MY DISPLAY MENU.
Well, the next steps were quite predictable. Both got slowly on the stereo. Ron lit the fire.
Slowly, timidly, they started exchanging sexual fantasies, step-bystep description of foreplay, sly suggestions about what they
would
like to
do
to each other,
like
have
done. Like most computer kids they are smart, inventive and very shy. But right now they're getting bolder and saucier.
Whew!
Floppy
in the brain,
was
The Zen
Ron and
of Cyberfuck
boon of modern
electronics to
nervous systems by means of carebrain-fuck, up fully selected signals transmitted between their computers by the
to link
their
phone
lines.
277
TIMOTHY LEARY
Highly Interactive Software
Ron and
ities
members of
a fast-growing,
who
of Cybersex.
The
secret
Two
bodily contact.
This
in the
work
the
same way:
Wet
lips. Soft,
mounds and
one
is
No
is,
in
any way,
outmoded.
Hey, nothing can replace the
zling, nibbling, smelling,
honey-moaning, fondling,
But,
We
and
taste
and
perfume and the membrane softness of our lovers only in clusters of electric signals picked up by our neurons and programmed by
our mindware.
278
Cybersex
Personal Computing
People
desires
who
human
interaction:
Quantum
Lotus
Info-com.
2-3-4.
Electronic
Arts.
is
Radio
Shacking?
of a
after all,
the
commander
of pleasure craft!
Quantum Sex
has been know^n for years that people who communicate via computer-phone linkups can reach amazing levels of intimacy.
It
Most
respected newspaper
and conservative pop moralists had been warning that computers will depersonalize humanity, and alienate us more from each other. These media experts made the classic, dreary, conservative mistake: trying to understand and explain the future in terms of the past. Bureau-stats and managerial, their eyes firmly fixed on rearpsychologists, liberal ministers,
view screens, think of the computer as a machine. A metal product of the industrial age. Sexless. Hard. No one except certain
in the decaying
decadent, black leather, transvestite, hair-dyed, mechanico-freaks slums of factory suburb fans of kinky techno-punk
DEVO
Grace Jones, would think of using machines, for lacocca's sake, with
Police,
ball-bearings and transmissions and smoky, metal parts, to enhance sexual and romantic experience. If any.
279
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Brain
But the computer
electronic brain.
Is
is
not a machine.
a siUcon sub-circuit of an
moment. The brain has no eyes, ears, The brain is a powerful knowledge prostrong thighs. cessor packed away in, and protected by, the bony case of the skull. The same is true of the computer, a powerful thoughtprocessor packed away in, and protected by, the metal case. Both the brain and the computer receive, sort, and output
Now,
think about
it
for a
full lips,
The
brain, lest
we
forget,
is
we know how
to use
it,
is
Why?
Because
link
up
via
computers
their
"naked"
of bodily contact: garter belts, bedrooms, zippers, bras, contraceptives, bodily parts are bypassed.
slide
Your
no clumsy
of the Tissue-Ware
Vicki had met at a discussion group and started dating. First at the coffee shop. Then maybe a cocktail lounge. Then dinners and movies. The first fumbling steps at intimacy: holding hands, knees rubbing under the table.
Ron and
What to wear? The familiar mating-ground questions. place or yours? Then the complicated dance of mutual seduction. The nagging worries of the person with no more than average sexual compe-
My
tence.
280
Cybersex
He
thinks: Shall
She wonders: Will he think I'm a trollop Is she smart? Is she pretty enough? Can
like to
grab a handful?
it
get
get
it
Who Who
is is
this
guy anyway?
this
dame anyway?
Worry. Worry.
a wonderfully natural
way
for
two people
to
mating dance.
use the
word
natural to describe
phone-linked computers. Actually, almost every animal species has developed distance-courting, tele-arousal signals to pave the way for the eventual sweaty, writhing contact
of genital sex and the ejaculation of sperm. Insects telecommunicate their sexual desires with amazing
gusto. Every
little
on a hot
summer
how
he'd like
you hear scraping his violin-string wings telling the neighborhood ladies exactly night to do it to them. The horny boy cicada is talking
cricket
is
neighborhood
girls.
The chemical
five miles
scents called
in
heat are like telephone messages telling every lusty male within
how
the horny
young
and
tastes.
281
TIMOTHY LEARY
The
And how about
Birds and the Bees
Do
It
the bird-songs as a
compelUng way
for arousing
sexual desire? At the right time of year, usually in the spring, the male song-bird's body swells with testosterone: the male sex hor-
mone. He bursts into song. He sends a long-distance, matingdating message which is picked up by every female in the neighborhood. The song boots up the sex circuits in the female's
brain and she suddenly starts thinking about how nice it would be to have a lusty guy around to nibble her willing neck and
stroke her soft, feathered body with his wings and climb on top with his wiry, strong, warm body and open her up with his straining hard modem and make her feel just the way her brain tells
have recently announced a discovery that "shakes the conventional wisdom of brain science Nerve cells in birds go through of birth and death ... At the time of hormonal giant cycles
.
.
changes, the brain anatomies change. The specific portion of the forebrain responsible for singing, which is large in the spring,
becomes half
as large in the
fall.
deemed
less talented."
is
a sexual organ
membranes of
And
the
steamy brain gets turned on by compatible signals. And the song birds who can give "good phone" grow bigger brains! What an
advertisement for quantum-sex!
282
Cybersex
Telephone Sex
Come
come
to think of
it,
where boys and girls don't get to meet and look each other over around the village square.
How
do
know
each other,
test
as mating partners?
The use of
an inevitable step in human evolution. Q-Sex is just adding a new dimension to the conversation of good, honest boyolescents
is
girl lust.
Computer
talk
is
a direct
way
circuits of
our brains.
The Cybernetics
At the onset of puberty, new circuits of our brains activate. The human body undergoes a sudden change, almost as dramatic as
the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly.
All sorts of
nubile body. Breasts begin to swell and strain to be caressed. The little worm-penis of the schoolboy grows into a swelling, red tube
of incorrigible desire. New circuits of the brain suddenly turn on, flooding the body
with impetuous hormones and hot mating becomes obsessed with sex.
Psychologists
tell
juices.
The teenager
us that the teenager thinks of sex several times an hour. Involuntary erections strain the jeans of the embarrassed
currents of desire lash the body of the perturbed She screams at rock stars and swoons over the pinyoung lady.
lad.
Hot steamy
stars.
283
TIMOTHY LEARY
to the delicate needs of others. In the desperate grip of passion,
they trip over themselves and hurt each others' feelings. That's w^here electronic foreplay comes in.
and the
mag-
and movie
actors.
The
pictures activate
Remember
Moralists
condemn
solitary sex
and
and boot up the "sex areas" in their brain. The Moral Majority gets convenience stores to ban Penthouse. Playboy, and
inations
Hustler.
Ear-Sex
in
When
warned
dark ages of the 1930s, v^e v^ere the sex manuals that masturbation caused nervousness,
The Catholic Church was pursuing its insane policy of stamping out genital pleasure and preventing the "sex areas" of my brain from swelling. I remember the kinky conversations in the confessional box.
I
would kneel
in the
"Forgive
me
Father,
am
guilty of
impure thoughts,."
"Which impure thoughts, my son?" "I thought about making love to my cousin Margaret because
284
Cybersex
is
blond and has big boobs, and to Clara Bow, and to all the members of the chorus line of the Radio City Rockettes, and to a girl
I
saw on
"That's enough, son." Father Cavenaugh sighed. "Have you used any sinful books or magazines?" "Yes, Father. Spicy Detective, Spicy Adventure. Spicy Western.
Bathing Beauties.
Atlantic City
"Enough, enough!" cried the flustered Priest. "Such books and magazines are occasions of sin. You must destroy them."
"Yes, Father."
save five
And as your penance, Hail Mary's." This whispered "tell and listen" ritual did little to prevent the "sex areas" of my brain from growing. Might as well try to stop
"Now,
say a heartfelt Act of Contrition.
Father's
Our
and
five
Confessions were heard by bored or sex-tortured priests because it was their only erotic contact. They obviously got off
on
it.
In a way,
we
sinners
in the
by kneeling there
were giving the Good Fathers aural sex dark box, whispering our sweet, little,
warm, open trembling ear of the Priest. Teenagers today spend hours on the phone joking and flirting because it's a safe and calm way to explore erotic interests withdirty secrets into the
out being swirled into grappling scenes. They stimulate each other's imaginations, exploring and experimenting with erotic signals.
285
TIMOTHY LEARY
Cyber-Vamps: Telephone
The telephone sex
of brain-sex.
Sandi's
Call Girls
forward
in the art
Phone Sex ad
I
invites
you to "Talk
dirty to
I'll
my
you
nipples hard.
w^ant to
cum
"I'll
"Beg for it!" says Mistress Kate. "I know what you deserve." "Climax with me! I'm hot, wet, and waiting!" murmurs Lisa.
is
you
felt
Maybe
not.
spoilsports
want us
to feel guilty
about phone
by any frivolous, hedonic, dilettante use of technology for personal delight. Phones are leased to us by Ma Bell to help us be-
come
better citizens
and to
call
home
at holidays.
if
memories of our
earliest
teenage passions.
286
Cybersex
So
will?
why
The
trick
is this:
You
learn
how
which
her-or-him to whisper to you the coded names and phrases of your first crushes. The songs of your heating season of rut.
Do you
circuits
see
what you
up your adolescent
are performing a
You
neuro-linguistic experiment.
You
age-regression.
You
are
The Brain
as Sexual
Organ
Now here
is some good news: Your brain is apparently eager to oblige. Your brain wants to be stimulated, opened up,
caressed, jacked-
Your brain
If
hates boredom.
month
For
you keep your brain repeating the same old reality-tape, after month, your brain will sigh and give up on you. Just
many
easier than
running around
like a
horny
robot, pulling clothes off and on, jumping in and out of sacks
it's dif-
partner imagination and then start acting it out, while at trying to master the private signals that turn his-or-her brain on.
on a
first
date, to teach a
new
how
to turn
287
TIMOTHY LEARY
Computer Simulations
Cybersex
is
a relaxed
way
of learning
how
to explore this
is
brand
new
frontier of Cyber-Course.
The computer
a wonderful ap-
The
hottest
sell-
ing software in the hobbyist market is simulation games. Flight Simulation lets you practice take-offs and landing. Submarine
Commander:
simulations
North
Atlantic.
Wall
Street
let
you
Now
if it's
why
is it
not okay to simulate the most important game of all? Why not get on-line and link up with the brain of your partner? Murmur teenage sweet nothings into her brain-ROM? Stick your
floppy disk in his cerebral software and whisper exactly the things he wants to hear?
Simulation: You are back again in your parent's house flirting with your high school crush! And while you are taking advantage of your parent's absence by disporting naked in the rumpus room
of your cerebellum, give yourself
some
first
credit.
You
are a neuro-
sexual pioneer!
You belong
to the
Without
guilt.
With healthy
the
curiosity.
And
a desire to please
your Cyber-Mate.
Cybersex
uses
powerful
instruments
of
knowledge-
processing and communication to perform the most important task of this stage of human evolution.
Own
You
are learning
how
288
Cybersex
To take over the programming of your bored brain. Surfing your own brain waves. Cybersex and Brain Fucking could be a key to
freedom and growth.
you don't use your head for your own pleasure and ment and education, and growth, who will?
If
entertain-
289
Bibliography
1942
Prelude to Nothing
A Drama
in
1956
Multi-Level Measurement of Personality
1957
Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality
Functional Methodology for Personality Evaluation Timothy Leary, Director of Psychology Research
Kaiser Foundation Hospital, Oakland
The Ronald
Press
Company,
New
York
1964
The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., Richard Alper, Ph.D. University Books
291
Bibliography
1966
Psychedelic Prayers after the Poets Press, New York
Tao Te Ching
1967
Start
Your
Own
Religion
League
NY
1968
High
Priest
An NAL
The
New York
GP
1970
Jail
Notes
New York
CA
States
Timothy
CA
1973
Confessions of a
Hope Fiend
York
Bantam Books,
Starseed:
New
Psi-Phi
Comet Tale
Transmitted from Folsom Prison by Timothy Leary Level Press, San Francisco
292
Bibliography
1974
The Curse of the Oval
Illustrated
Room
by
High Times
Terra II
Press,
1977
Neuropolitics
The Sociobiology of Human Metamorphosis Timothy Leary with Robert Anton Wilson and George A. Koopman
Peace Press, Los Angeles
1979
Intelligence Agents Peace Press, Los Angeles
The
Timothy Leary
24 Stages of Your Neurological Tarot Scripts by Robert Anton Wilson
and Scholarly
Adapted from a Musical Comedy by Barbara Leary Peace Press, Los Angeles
1982
Changing
My
Mind,
Among
Other Things
New Jersey
293
Bibliography
1983
Flashbacks
An Autobiography
J
P Tarcher
Inc.
1986
Timothy Leary's Mind Mirror
Electronic Arts, San Mateo,
CA
1994
Chaos and Cyber Culture
Timothy Leary,
editor
editor,
CA
1997
Design for Dying
New York
294
il
rhe Delicious Grace of Moving One's Hand: The Collected Sex Writings com)rlses Timothy Leary's selection of his best writing about sexuality. Culled from over
and never before collected, these essays, anecdotes, interviews on an exploration of the link between sexuality and the and nind, through Leary's views of this country's social and psychological attitudes oward sex. Humorous, prophetic, and as unconventional as the author, this book will ielight and enlighten everyone.
hirty years of writing
the young American intellectual, was totally cut off from the body and senses. Ay clothes had been obediently selected to fit the young professional image. Even
)f
I
one hundred drug sessions routinely listened to pop music, drank martinis, ate was put before me. had "appreciated" art by pushing my body around to sacred places," but this tourism had nothing to do with direct aesthetic sensation. Ay nervous system was cocooned in symbols; the event was always second-hand. Art /as an academic concept, an institution. The idea that one should live one's life as work of art had never occurred to me. After we took psilocybin, sat on the couch
ifter
I
^hat
chamber,
letting
my
right cerebral
sensual reception. Flora Lu and Maynard started teaching me eroticism the of attention. Each moment was examined for sensual possibility. The delicious oga of irace moving one's hand, not as part of a learned survival sequence, but for kineshetic joy."
an iconic figure of the and sexual revolutions, earned a doctorate psychology from Harvard University where he taught until 1963 when he became, with colleague Richard Alpert, the first Harvard faculty to be dismissed since Ralph Waldo Emerson. His many books Include Intelligence Agents, The Psychedelic Reader and Jail Notes.
lothy Leary (1920-1997),
jfchedelic
over art
Barnaby Hall
Photonica
ISBN 1-56025-181-6
Knapp
51395>
9'781560"251811